Jill Hinton Wolfe is a legally blind U.S. Army veteran, writer, and entrepreneur based in Grand Rapids. After serving in the military and later losing much of her sight to a rare genetic eye disease, Jill rebuilt her life around purpose, creativity, and service. She’s the author of Mission, Tribe & Grace: How Veterans Can Act to Lead Change, and the founder of Outdoor Book Club, which brings women together through books, nature, and meaningful conversation.
A passionate advocate for veterans and disability inclusion, Jill speaks and writes about identity, belonging, and post-traumatic growth. She also runs a ghostwriting business that helps female founders and changemakers build credibility and authentic thought leadership on LinkedIn.
Jill holds a master’s degree in Social Innovation and believes in the power of story to connect communities and spark change. Whether she’s leading a trail book club, keynoting a conference, or helping a client find their voice, Jill’s work centers on courage, connection, and grace. She shares life’s adventures with her German Shepherd guide dog, Hannah.
Full Transcript:
Jennifer Moss: Hi there, I'm Jennifer Moss and welcome to a special edition of Powerful Women Let's Talk. This November we are honoring and celebrating our female veterans in Michigan, and today I have the honor to welcome Jill Hinton Wolfe. Actually, it's a welcome back to Powerful Women as Jill and I have done this before, but a lot has changed of course since 2022. So welcome back, Jill.
Jill Hinton Wolfe: I'm so excited to be here. Thank you.
JM: So again, a true pleasure to have you here and have you back as we settle into the month of November, of course, Veterans Day, November11th. We are truly honored in this cycle of Powerful Women: Let's talk to honor our female veterans here in the great state of Michigan. So let's start with a little background for folks, Jill. When we last talked, you were Grand Valley State University's first military and veteran resource manager and had also served as a mentor for GVSU's Michigan Veterans Entrepreneur Lab, or MVELab. And you're also a founding executive committee member of GVSU's Veterans Alumni Association. So you have had a wonderful uh life of supporting and doing things for veterans, correct?
JHW: Yeah, that's correct. I joined the Army in 1995, literally on a coin flip, which is a whole other story. But those three years that I served on active duty, uh it's sort of, guess, a middle finger to my parents. At the time, I was 19. And so that was my sort of a way to get out into life and to experience it in a way that I knew I wasn't going to be able to do it. And it was only three years, but working with veterans and advocating for veterans and seeing the issues and the potential for veterans has always just been at the core of my heart and what I want to do. The way that shows up has always evolved, but it is something that I still feel passionately about and I've written a book about it and continue to do this work long after I took the uniform off.
JM: Absolutely. And so as we fast forward to 2025, you're again, very busy, very active. You're very active in the veterans affairs. And when I say that, you still see the importance of recognizing the important work of veterans, as you mentioned, and addressing the ongoing needs. Currently, Vice President of the Kent County Veterans Services Advisory Board and on the Michigan Hall of Heroes Board, right? I mean, you're still like right in the game.
JHW: Well, I will say that I have turned over those duties to the next, you know, a generation of veterans who are coming up and doing that. Still very active and supportive with Kent County veterans. We have probably one of the most robust uh county veteran services programs in the entire state. There's incredibly dedicated people over there doing great work getting veterans the benefits they deserve that they need, and especially when they're, you know, at their lowest. And so that work I continue to support in sort of less direct ways. Michigan Heroes Museum and the, the board of the...They all have sort of similar names, so I'm sort of forgetting, was... me it was the Michigan...Let's see. The Cape County Veterans and the Michigan Hall of Heroes. Hall of Heroes, right. And that was a great experience. I got to be there when Grand Valley's President Emeritus Tom Haas, who's a Coast Guard vet, invited me to come along when he was inducted into that. So I continue to keep ties with all of these organizations. I just am more in those specific organizations in a less formal role at this time.
JM: Yeah. But again, still very active. And so, but you're also taking your skill set and what you do and what you like to do to a new level. And when I looked on your website, it said inspiring bold lives through advocacy, writing and adventures. First thing you see when you go to your website, what does that mean in your life today?
JHW: Well, advocacy is always going to be part of who I am because I feel that I have a responsibility to the people around me, to my community, to the veterans that I love who I see have, again, such potential, but aren't always able to realize that potential and need the sort of mentoring and guidance and camaraderie, actually, I think is a huge part of it, the tribe that I talk about in my book, to be able for them to do this sort of ripple effect and go out into their world and make their impact. And so that's definitely the advocacy part. The writing, I've been writing since I was four years old. My mother had me do the Christmas letter for the family when I starting at 10 it's just something. It's the way that I see the world. It's my creative expression. I love fiction, nonfiction, all kinds of writing. I love writing for other people. I've been doing some ghost writing. So I know they have great messages that they want to put out there in the world. So being able to work with them to help them really craft that so that it can engage with the people they most want to try and reach which has been fun. And then the adventure is I love books. As a writer, most of us love books. And I also love the outdoors. It's been a place where I have been able to find peace and connection and an ability to really see the big picture and understand more clearly what my responsibility is to the world. And so Outdoor Book Club kind of came out of that. I wanted more women to get outside. And doing that through books just seemed like the most perfect way to have the most amazing conversations around the campfire. So we do retreats, usually centered around a book, but sometimes around a theme of women, and we get out there in the wilderness, in the wild. These days it's more, we'll be in an Airbnb. As I get older, sleeping on the ground is less of a...
JM: A little glamping of sorts.
JHW: Yes, yes, but we're still out But you're still outside. We're still out there on the trails, in the woods, with the water really connecting with each other, coming back from those retreats, more refreshed, more able to make the impact that we want to make in the world.
JM: Because I was going to say that that was going to be my next one was the outdoor book club. I was fascinated by that idea. And so you took, as you mentioned, your love of books and combined it with the outdoors. But also then, I would imagine still that advocacy is kind of still playing a role as you talk and correlate your stories with other women about trials, whatever is going on or or other things, correct?
JHW: Yes, absolutely. our lives all kind of weave together and tie together. The money that I got to start Outdoor Book Club back in 2014 was actually through a veterans business plan competition, just for women veterans, actually. And so took home a sizable check to be able to get that started, get it off the ground. And it's evolved over the years. It's not the same that it was back then, but I think it's even more powerful and the connections that we build there, again, it's bringing it personal home, that tribe, those women that don't always get a chance to really unburden what's on their hearts or ask other women, how have you navigated this particular situation, whether it's professional or personal? And then again, having that space to think about it, to process through it, and then bring it back to the world, coming back through that sort of... You know, in the veteran world, we hear a lot about PTSD, but I'm much more interested in post traumatic growth, how we go through hard things, and then come out the other side wiser, more compassionate, more ready to make the world a better place.
JM: So and we you're doing so many powerful women things. The writing and the speaking storage of courage and resilience do tell because that's part of your book, right? Is that the the mission, tribe and grace? Right?
So tell me about, we were talking about the things you explore, but the book itself, when did that happen and come about, that book?
JHW: So I loved the work that I did at Grand Valley as the director of the Military Infections Resource Center. I'm still very much connected with that work. I just felt like it was time to pass the torch on to somebody else to take it to the next level. And so that happened. But then I sort of got kicked out into this wild, you know, where I no longer had to get up every morning and find out, you know, what was on my calendar, what was in my email. It was very wide open. AndI knew I always wanted to write a book. And I told everyone when I left Grand Valley, I'm gonna write this book. I already know the name. It's Mission, Tribe, and Grace. And, you know, watch for it. It's coming out. Well, books, you know, turns out books are harder to write than just that. And so I spent lots of time in the woods. Lots of time uh on the floor drinking gin out of the cat dish, as Anne Lamott used to say, metaphorically speaking. But lots of anxiety there before finally getting through that and being able to write it. And what Mission, Tribe, and Grace is is Mission is finding a sense of purpose. Tribe is those relationships in that community that we all depend on so heavily. And then Grace is the hardest part for, I think, everyone, but veterans especially, is that resilience, that cutting yourself some slack. You can't continue to put yourself out there in the world and give and give and give without having some sort of sense of, it's okay to make mistakes and letting go of perfectionism. Because if you're doing this work, it's gonna happen, right? And so those are really the three pillars, mission, tribe, and grace of how I think you live a meaningful life. And I've certainly found it to be true in my own experiences.
JM: Whether you're doing speaking events or the writing to ignite that conversation, you said your mission is to break down stereotypes, celebrate diversity, and inspire positive change. And you're still doing that today, right?
JHW: I am. Yes, I think that it's very easy to lump veterans into these sort of too far off categories. On one end of the spectrum, we have Captain America, pinnacle of integrity and honor veterans, which is inaccurate, know, or flawed
people just like everybody else. But on the other side, and the more damaging side, is this sort of idea of veterans as ticking time bombs of PTSD. And I always like to quote the statistic that the most common cause of PTSD is car accidents, right? And we all know somebody who's been in a car accident. And so sure, veterans struggle, and they have a hard time. But I would really encourage folks to
think of veterans, especially this Veterans Day, as being, you know, complex. They're not just, you know, Captain America. They're not just, you know, a psycho with, you know, major health problems. But we're complex people who have interesting lives. We do have very good stories. I will tell you, veterans have the best stories, which is why I probably continue to hang out with them. And we do want to seek that meaning and service out there in the world, even though the service is officially ended, most of us are still looking for those ways to continue to serve our communities.
JM: Wonderful. That's awesome. Our hats off to all of our veterans and of course you. ah As you're doing all these great things, Jill, I mentioned that we've chatted before. Did your earlier work ah as a seasoned corporate marketing professional because you did do that and you were an adjunct professor as well in advertising and PR and also a military, as you mentioned, intelligence soldier for the US Army. Did all of that help you or help prepare you for all that you're doing today?
JHW: Absolutely. I mean, I talked a little bit about military service. It's such a, you know, you just really get put through the ringer you can't help but come out the other side changed. Though when I first got out of the military, I had no idea what I really wanted to do with my life. just I knew I had to get a degree. So I came back to Grand Valley, actually was at Grand Valley when I joined the army and then returned with the GI Bill in 1998, graduated in 2001.
And at the time I had a new baby, I was newly married, I was new in college, so I just had just this triple threat of anxiety and overwhelm coming out of the military and then a whole other culture that I didn't even understand of students versus what was in the military, right? But I did it and I got through it and in fact I was on the Dean's List as a lot of veterans are, went into the corporate world and made my way there, did a bunch of work in PR, went on to work with sales teams and loved it. But at the end of the day, it felt empty. I didn't feel like what I was doing was really changing people's lives in the way that I had thought that I would. And so when the opportunity came to work at Grand Valley, was right in the middle, just as COVID was starting. think I did interviews in May of 2020 and was hired in June.
That was like, it took me to a whole other level of seeing what I was capable of. And the two and a half years that I did that work, I will say changed me almost as much as the military did. So yeah, it's all just right grist for the mill. It all adds threads to this complex sort of, know, tapestry of how our lives turn out. And I'm still adding threads today.
JM: Absolutely. Good for you. And you're also very active uh in the legally blind community. Does that intersect with the work that you're doing with and for veterans in any way?
JHW: Yeah, I think that getting a diagnosis, so I didn't start losing my vision until 2016. And that was a tough diagnosis to get. But initially, it was very easy to just say, well, I'm not going to worry about that right now. can still see pretty well. I'll figure that out later. was going through a lot of turmoil. I'd just gone through a divorce and it was, yeah, was 2016 was a rough year. But it became pretty clear pretty quickly that a diagnosis like that is going to make you come face to face with the thing that scares you the most. And you can choose which path you want to take when you reach that fear. And you can retreat, go sit on your couch under the covers, be angry at the world, be angry at the forces that be that put you in this position. Or you can decide to accept it, that this is reality and this is how it's happening, and make a plan for moving forward given what the situation on the ground is. And that's I think is what my disability has given me, is this ability to just get really real with what's really happening and not get hung up on why is it happening to me and isn't this so terrible, but just figure out the next steps, which really closely mirrors my military experience too. So it's been really interesting to see these two identities intersect and... uh Yeah, there's not too many legally blind veterans I know, but I do know a few of them. And they're some of my favorite people.
JM: Absolutely. And so you just continue to persevere. I want to mention that in 2021, you were awarded the Michigan Veterans Affairs Agency's Veteran Educational Advocate of the Year Award. And you're also a 2022 Myra Fellow. And you just in your lifetime member of the American Legion, of course. As you look at the things that you've accomplished and you've got your book, you're doing some powerful things, as we like to say. What are you excited to share that might be next for you, Jill? I mean, there's a lot that we're looking at and you're doing some wonderful things, but I can get a feeling that you don't stop with what you've already done. You've got plans for the future. What might be? I'm just getting that feeling. I don't know. But what do you have planned for the future?
JHW: You know, that's a great question. um I think like a lot of people, I feel called these days tog et involved in my local community. And the politics that I see playing out in my city and my hometown of Grand Rapids are not the politics that I see playing out at the federal level. I see people here reaching out, connecting. There's, I love this concept of interdependence, right? We're all in this together. So the more that I can lean into that and help that grow at a local level, at a political level, and sort of get rid of this sort of the politics of grievance, right? Like I have been harmed, I have been hurt, and move more into that sort of responsibility. Like what can I do to make the situation better? I have a responsibility to the people around me, even the strangers that I don't know to continue to show up and do the hard things so that we can, you our kids can live in a better place and we have a future that looks more welcoming and compassionate and exciting for everybody. So your mission, tribe and grace quest continues then.
JM: It does, absolutely. Jill, I really want to thank you so much for taking time to talk with us today for this special edition of Powerful Women Let's Talk. We want to thank you, of course, for your service and thank you for all that you do and continue to do for our veteran community and the community at large. we thank all, we thank all of our veterans, of course. And we want to thank all of you for listening today to another edition of Power for Women Let's Talk. I'm Jennifer Moss. We'll see you next time.
