19/05/2026
We are honored to welcome Bill Skeens to our Expert Business Growth Panel.
Bill Skeens is the former Founder and CEO of Prairie City Bakery - the Chicago-born bakery he built from a single product into a national powerhouse over 25 years.
It started with Muffin Tops. It grew to over 125 products sold in 30,000+ locations nationwide across retail, convenience stores, in-store bakeries, and food service - with customers including 7-Eleven, WAWA, Walgreens, Starbucks, and Chuck E. Cheese. For a decade, Prairie City Bakery was also the Official Cookie of the Chicago Cubs. Prairie City Bakery was named to the Inc. 500/5000 four times as one of the fastest-growing companies in America, and Bill was recognized by Smart Business magazine and US Bank as one of their top 10 business leaders in 2010.
In 2019, Bill sold the company to McKee Foods - the parent company of Little Debbie - and has since dedicated himself fully to mentoring entrepreneurs. He has personally mentored over 150 companies through the University of Chicago Polsky Center for Entrepreneurship, 1871, and the Neighborhood Entrepreneurship Lab. He is also an author and speaker whose signature talk - Starting a Business and Lessons Learned Along the Way - has resonated with founders, MBA students, and business communities across the country.
Bill is joining our Expert Business Growth Panel to share what 25 years of building, scaling, and eventually exiting a business actually looks like - the wins, the hard lessons, and everything in between. He has been in the room with major retailers, navigated every stage of growth, and come out the other side with the kind of perspective that only comes from doing it for real.
For any founder who wants to know what the long game looks like, Bill is the person on this panel who has lived it.
