I grew up in nine schools. I became the youngest person on Greenville City Council. I led a civil rights organization. And then I went to work for a Fortune 500 company.
Every room I have walked into, I was the thing nobody expected.
Atlanta raised me in nine schools across every neighborhood in the city. Buckhead to Bankhead. Different communities, different circumstances, same lesson in every one of them: the people with the least often have the most to offer. They just need someone paying attention.
That lesson didn't come from a classroom. It came from years of watching how institutions work and who they leave behind. From volunteering on a Senate campaign at the suggestion of a friend and realizing, for the first time, that the problems people were living with were local. Solvable. And nobody was showing up to solve them.
So I did.
In 2009, I became the youngest member of Greenville City Council and one of two minorities on the council. I served as Mayor Pro Tem. I pushed for affordable housing funding, street-level infrastructure, and the kind of investments that don't make headlines but change lives. I learned, in that role, that power is not given. It is built. And it is built closest to the people it is supposed to serve.
From there, I became the first woman to serve as President and CEO of the Urban League of the Upstate. Then the first to lead YWCA Greenville. In each organization, the work was the same: take an institution that had been doing important work for decades and help it operate in alignment with what it claimed to stand for. Align the values with the operations. That is the work I have spent 20 years doing in different rooms.
“The gap between what organizations say they stand for and how they actually run is the most expensive gap in business today.”
That insight became the Operational Purpose framework. The observation that values only create value when they are built into how an organization actually operates. Not just what it says. How it hires. How it allocates resources. How it measures success. How it treats the people nobody expected.
Today, I carry that framework into my work as VP of Corporate Responsibility and Inclusion at Winnebago Industries, where I lead enterprise strategy for sustainability, philanthropy, inclusion, and social impact across a portfolio of outdoor recreation brands. I serve on the boards of Outdoor Afro and the Outdoor Foundation, where the mission is to make Be Great, Outdoors a promise that belongs to everyone. And I show up on stages across the country to make the argument that the world's greatest resource is the one nobody found yet.
That is Untapped. And it is not just a framework. It is a belief I have been living my entire life.
The most valuable people and ideas
are often the ones nobody called on yet.
Jil has been in rooms where that was her. She has been in rooms where that was
someone else. And she has spent 20 years building the argument that organizations
cannot afford to keep missing it.
Recognize potential. Redefine value.
Move into action.
Recognize Potential
Identify what is being overlooked: the people, the ideas, the communities, and the potential inside individuals who have never been given the conditions to show what they are capable of.
Redefine Value
Challenge the systems and assumptions that determine who gets seen, who gets promoted, and whose ideas get resourced. The most valuable asset in any organization is rarely the obvious one.
Move Into Action
Turn awareness into execution. Build Operational Purpose into how organizations actually run: with owners, metrics, accountability, and a measurable connection between purpose and performance.
The receipts.
These are not just titles. Each one is a room Jil walked into, earned trust in, and built something that lasted.
Corporate
VP of Corporate Responsibility and Inclusion, Winnebago Industries. Executive Director, Winnebago Industries Foundation. Board member, Outdoor Afro. Board member, Outdoor Foundation.
Civic and Nonprofit
Youngest member of Greenville City Council and Mayor Pro Tem. First woman President and CEO of the Urban League of the Upstate. First woman to lead YWCA Greenville. Founder of the Talented Tenth Greenville Leadership Conference.
Speaking and Thought Leadership
TEDx speaker. Graduate of Yale University Women's Campaign School. Keynote speaker for Fortune 500 companies, national conferences, and civic organizations. Featured in the New York Times, USA Today, Ebony Magazine, and Newsweek.
Author and Educator
Author of The Power and Purpose Within: 365 Daily Affirmations for Intentional Living and Leadership (2026) and Women, Wine, and Politics (2019). Co-founder of Leadership and Love Now.
Education
Bachelor's degree, Wofford College. Graduate degree, Webster University. Yale University Women's Campaign School.
An Atlanta native who has called South Carolina home for more than two decades and Minnesota her second home, Jil finds her greatest joy in faith, family, and creating space for others to rise.
She has visited more than 30 countries. She is bilingual. She is married to a man who makes her laugh every day. She is deeply committed to mentoring. And she believes that leadership and love are not opposites. They are the same calling.
She lives each day guided by the same truth that inspired her second book: the power and purpose within are always enough.