Bill Green, an award-winning broadcast journalist and host of the “Bill Green’s Maine” television show, will be the featured speaker at Southern Maine Community College’s 70th commencement on May 21.
“Bill Green has distinguished himself as one of Maine’s top television personalities, bringing Maine’s great outdoors into people’s homes and expanding our knowledge about the people, places and things that make Maine so special,” said Ron Cantor, president of SMCC. “He has the ability to resonate with Mainers of all types, whether we live in the city or the country or the north or the south. He has opened our eyes to the beauty and uniqueness of our state.”
SMCC will hold its graduation ceremony at 2 p.m., Sunday, May 21, at the Cross Insurance Arena in Portland.
A native of Bangor, Green landed his first television job as a cameraman for WLBZ-TV in Bangor while he was attending the University of Maine at Orono. He parlayed that opportunity into a career as a sports anchor and later as a feature reporter specializing in recreation and the outdoors at WLBZ-TV and its sister station, WCSH-TV in Portland.
His weekly television show, “Bill Green’s Maine,” debuted in 2000 and follows Green across the state as he explores all things Maine. In 2016, the show won a regional Emmy as the Outstanding Magazine Program in New England. In 2015, he won a regional Edward R. Murrow Award for his feature reporting.
Green is an inductee in the Maine Broadcasting Hall of Fame, the Maine Sports Hall of Fame, and the Silver Circle of the New England Chapter of the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences.
He is a registered Maine Guide, a senior warden at Trinity Episcopal Church in Portland, and the assistant junior varsity baseball coach at Greely High School. He and his wife live in Cumberland and have two grown children.