April 10, 2026
Employee Spotlight

What the Parkinson's Community Has Taught Me Over the Past Decade

April 2026 marks 10 years since Acadia first introduced a treatment option for patients living with Parkinson’s related hallucinations and delusions. Bill Keller, who leads Acadia’s Patient Advocacy and Industry Relations team, reflects on the early days of that work, the people and moments that shaped it, and what the Parkinson’s community has taught him along the way.

When I think about what first brought me to Acadia, I think about a conversation I had with my aunt. She was caring for my uncle as his Parkinson's disease progressed. She told me the movement symptoms were hard enough, but what wore on her most were what she called "the other things." At the time, I did not fully understand what she meant. I just knew she was carrying more than most people could see.

That conversation stayed with me when I joined Acadia in 2013. I was employee number 47. We were in a small office in Torrey Pines Science Park. We had one conference room. For a while, we had one three-hole punch, which mattered a lot because our Board of Directors preferred binders over PowerPoint. It was a small company trying to become something bigger.

What drew me in was not just the science. It was also the chance to work closely with a community I had already seen through my own family, and one that was dealing with much more than most people understood.

What I Learned Early

One of the first things the clinical team encouraged me to do was spend time with movement disorder specialists and the Parkinson's community. I went to conferences. I met investigators. I listened to patient advocates and caregivers. Very quickly, I realized my aunt had been right.

Parkinson's awareness often starts with the symptoms people can see. Tremor. Changes in movement. Slowness. But below the surface are the non-motor symptoms that can be just as disruptive and, for many families, much harder to talk about.

That is what my aunt meant by “the other things.”

I heard clinicians and caregivers talk about hallucinations and delusions, confusion, fear, and the strain that falls on families when home no longer feels predictable or safe. These were not side issues. For many people, they changed daily life. They changed relationships. They wore down caregivers.

One memory from those years has stayed with me more than almost any other. On a video shoot with a Parkinson’s patient, I was sitting in a woman's living room when she pointed to her fireplace and told me that, at her lowest point, she saw demons and dragons coming out of it. I remember looking at that fireplace and thinking how easy it is to miss the reality of what someone is living with if you only look at what is visible from the outside. That moment made the invisible real.

Small Company Learning Fast

Acadia was still a small company when I joined, but it was also a company in motion. We were building out the commercial organization, bringing in new people, and figuring out what needed to be built inside the company versus what could be done with outside partners. It was scrappy. It was intense. And it moved fast.

What I remember most from those years is how hard people worked to stay close to the community. We saw how significant the unmet need was and how strongly the community wanted this part of Parkinson's to be taken seriously. We brought clinicians and advocates in. We held lunch-and-learns. We shared what we were hearing from the field. We wanted people inside the company to understand the environments families were dealing with every day, not just the science behind them.

What Has Stayed with Me

What I remember most from that period is relief. Not in a corporate sense. In a human one.

I heard caregivers talk about the relief of finally having words for what they were seeing. I heard clinicians talk about the relief of having more direct conversations about symptoms that had too often gone unspoken. And I heard family members describe the moments when fear eased and connection returned. Those are not experiences you forget.

I also saw how important the advocacy community was in that moment. Organizations were updating resources, answering questions, and helping families talk more openly about experiences that were still widely misunderstood. That partnership mattered then, and it still matters now.

If there is one thing I hope more people understand during Parkinson's Disease Awareness Month, it is that Parkinson's is bigger than what most people can see. Families live with the visible symptoms, but they also live with the other things. The confusion. The fear. The changes that can affect how a person thinks, interprets the world, and relates to the people around them. Those experiences deserve more understanding and more honest conversation.

I also carry a lesson from those early years that still feels true now. Good science matters. Of course it does. But that is only part of the story. The science is the what. The how is the ways you engage with the community. How you listen. How you build trust. How you show up over time.

One of my first leaders at Acadia used to say, "You have to make a lot of deposits before you ever ask for a withdrawal." I have always thought that was right. Trust is earned slowly. It comes from showing up, listening carefully, and making it clear that the community's voice is not a box you check. It is part of how you work.

Not long ago, I drove past the small building where I started with the company. It had been more than 10 years. Looking at it, I felt a lot of gratitude. A lot has changed since then. What hasn’t changed is the need to keep listening to this community, to keep earning trust, and to keep paying attention to the parts of Parkinson's too many people still do not see.