International President Dr. Patti Hill's Theme

Changing the World

Change doesn’t happen all at once. It happens through many small choices. With every act of kindness, we change a life. With every Lions club and Leo club, we change a community.

When we change our communities, we change the world.

Bringing Out the Best in Others

Lifting others up is what she does. Dr. Patti Hill is an accomplished teacher, administrator, psychologist and small-business owner. But it isn’t her impressive resume that she’ll mention when you ask what’s important to her.

“The purpose of my life on this earth is to help others achieve their potential. If I’m not doing that, I should be!”

Dr. Hill makes it her mission to find the potential in others and to create an environment that helps them thrive. “I always see the good in people,” she says.

Every step in Dr. Hill’s career was made because she believed in doing her part to ensure others could achieve their dreams. When she was asked to teach special education in secondary school, she agreed and then promptly enrolled in a master’s program focusing on teaching the deaf and hard of hearing. While she was a young teacher, Dr. Hill’s uncle Eddie, who was deaf, had shared stories with her about the difficulty of traveling to distant boarding schools to be educated. Even then, he wasn’t allowed to use sign language in school. She hoped she could make education better for students like her uncle. While working as a teacher of deaf students, Dr. Hill was presented with the results of student testing performed by school psychologists. They informed her that although the students did well in visual perception, they scored low in verbal skills. Stunned, Dr. Hill used American Sign Language as she responded, “You didn’t even sign to them!” She knew her students couldn’t achieve their full potential if they couldn’t even use their primary source of communication. She didn’t want the same thing to happen to them that had happened to her uncle Eddie, so she began taking psychology classes to create a better way to assess students. Classes eventually turned into a doctorate degree, and now she’s a licensed psychologist. Dr. Hill served for a time as principal at a specialty school for children with severe speech and language development challenges in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. She also started a consultancy business using her knowledge and experience to help government agencies design and implement better programs for children, youth and their families, which she’s been running for more than 40 years. Dr. Patti Hill devoted her life to making the world a better place. Along the way, she found Lions.

Actually, Lions found her.