I Came to Peoria, IL, for College and Stayed for My Career

Courtesy of Bradley University

Once you experience Greater Peoria – its affordability, friendly residents, entertainment options, great job opportunities – it’s easy to see why people choose to plant roots here. In fact, many students who move to the region for college choose to stay in the area to start their careers following graduation.

Haley Ebeling, for example, grew up in Athens, Illinois. She attended Bradley University in Peoria, where she met her husband, Ross, and after stints in other cities, they decided to return to Peoria to raise their two daughters. Today, she has a career in medical sales.

What made you choose Bradley over other universities?

When I was 18, I wanted to be a physical therapist, and at the time, there were only three schools in Illinois that had a doctor of physical therapy (DPT) program. Bradley was one of them. Bradley was the closest school to home that offered a DPT program, and even though I visited a couple of other schools, I chose Bradley. I liked the campus size, and growing up in such a small town, Bradley University felt huge to me. It was the perfect size. If I had gone to someplace like the University of Illinois or the University of Iowa, I would have just drowned. The smaller campus and class sizes were great coming from a more rural community.

Courtesy of Bradley University

How did you end up with a career in medical sales?

I was unsure about graduate studies, and I had changed my mind about what I wanted in life. There was a speaker in one of my classes from a medical device sales company, and that had never really crossed my mind as a career option. After listening to the speaker, it sounded like something right up my alley. It’s still health care, and you’re indirectly helping patients and contributing, but it’s more of a business role.

What made you decide that Peoria was where you wanted to plant roots?

My husband is from Peoria, and we met at Bradley. He graduated a couple of years before me, and then we moved to Chicago for my job. We were there for a year, then I took a role at the company in Grand Rapids, Michigan, where we lived for four years. We loved it there, but we thought it would be great to move home to central Illinois one day. I was interviewing for an opportunity with another company and learned that they had the central Illinois territory job open, too. When they offered me the position, we got to choose where to go. We came back to Peoria. We wanted to be closer to family and friends, and after living away for so many years, we wanted to focus on what the most important thing long term would be, and that was returning to where our family is.

Courtesy of Haley Ebeling

What makes Peoria a great place to relocate?

Central Illinois is a great place to raise a family. It’s affordable. There are so many things that brought us back to the area. Peoria is the perfect midsize city. It’s not like living in the hustle and bustle of a city like Chicago, where you’re fighting for a parking spot. You can drive and park anywhere here. There are no long commutes that eat up your day. Those things make life so much easier. It’s a smaller community, and smaller communities are close-knit. There’s more community involvement and community activities, which definitely appealed to us about this area. My husband owns Central Illinois Countertops, a local countertop fabrication company, and just the ability to be able to be an entrepreneur and start up or procure a business is much more attainable and feasible in our area versus a big city like Chicago, where it would be much harder and more competitive and require more upfront investment dollars.