Years of community service prepared Food Bank of Wyoming executive director for new role

CASPER, Wyo. — Jill Stillwagon was chosen as Food Bank of Wyoming’s new executive director earlier this month. In many ways, Stillwagon has been preparing for this role most of her life, even if she hadn’t realized it until recently.

Jill grew up in a community-focused family in Florida, where she was often encouraged to be involved by her grandparents.

“I remember volunteering at the food pantry with my grandparents and delivering Meals on Wheels,” she said. “When I was younger, I did a lot of volunteer community service and volunteer work with my local church, so that’s always been important to me.”

Jill was promoted to executive director of the Food Bank of Wyoming this month, filling the spot left by Rachel Bailey after she accepted an offer from the Wyoming Community Foundation in June. Jill was hired by the Food Bank of Wyoming for the development manager position in August 2021 and served as the interim executive director after Bailey’s departure.

Jill’s eventual path to Casper includes numerous stops along the way. She was born and raised in Fort Myers, Florida, but in ninth grade she moved with her family after Hurricane Charlie. “My parents were like, ‘We’re done with hurricanes,'” she said, “so we moved to North Carolina.”

After high school, she earned a degree in environmental science and settled with her new husband, Michael, in Oklahoma. His work as a geologist soon took them to Houston, where Jill was hired as director of development for the Memorial Park Conservancy, which is the largest urban park in Houston, she said.

2020’s COVID-19 pandemic era was hard on countless people, and the Stillwagons were no exception.

“We had been through some really hard times with my father passing away and Michael’s father passing away within a short time, and we started evaluating things and asking, ‘What do we want out of life?'” she said. They had traveled before to Wyoming during the summer for vacations, and returned in 2021. “We decided, ‘Why don’t we try and make a leap?’ and I started applying for positions.”

She jumped at the chance to apply for an opening at the Food Bank of Wyoming and quickly got an interview opportunity. They’d already made vacation plans to camp in Wyoming that summer, and were on their way when she got invited to an in-person interview. “We came to Casper, checked it out to see if it was a good fit, and we said, ‘Yeah, let’s do this,'” she said. “So we drove back to Houston and I put in my notice at my job.”

They weren’t the only people looking to head west during the pandemic, and Jill arrived to a severe housing shortage in Casper. “That was a big surprise that I didn’t take into account,” she said. After a couple of months at her new job while living in an Airbnb, they were finally able to find an apartment and start making Casper their home.

“I remember that it was October when we first moved here and it snowed,” she said, “and I had never seen that much snow in my life.”

“I drive a Prius, and I remember Michael saying, ‘Well, I guess you better get used to shoveling snow now.”

Because of the pandemic, Jill arrived at the Food Bank at a time when food insecurity was skyrocketing. “I believe at that time, the Food Bank had distributed 13 million pounds of food, which for a state and population of our size is amazing,” she said, adding that she was amazed at the small staff’s expertise and dedication of distributing that food to pantries throughout the state.

Jill said she had some preconceived notions from her volunteer days at food pantries that were blown up upon arriving at the Food Bank. One was that the organization isn’t a pantry, but that it distributes food to partner pantries across the state. They also organize mobile pantries for towns and communities without a permanent food pantry.

Another notion was the quality of food. “I don’t remember fresh produce being a thing at that time,” she said. “When I got here, I was really impressed by how we were trying to serve neighbors with food that everyone wants to eat and should have access to.”

Post-pandemic inflation means the Food Bank of Wyoming still has challenges ahead as Jill takes the reins. “One in seven Wyomingites are food insecure, and that includes one in five children,” she said. That’s about 14.4% of Wyomingites, so this is going up.”

“We’re finding that many neighbors we’re serving now are having to stretch their budgets even more to do things that they need to do, which means maybe they’re not purchasing nutritious food all of the time, they might be buying less nutritious food that costs less,” she said.

“We exist to serve anyone that is in need of food assistance, and we know that everyone has different things going on in their lives,” she said. It’s not always unemployed or typically low-income people who need assistance. “There was this person I had connected with in Buffalo who was a nurse, had been a nurse her whole life, and after a medical incident she was not able to work,” Jill said.

Initiatives for the Food Bank moving forward include growing partnerships with grocery retailers to rescue food that would otherwise be tossed out and wasted. They’re also partnering with local suppliers and agricultural growers for fresh and local alternatives, she said. “We recently received a food purchasing agreement grant that allows us to source produce, proteins, grains and beans within a 400-mile radius of our distribution center.”

Jill said she and her husband, who now works for the Wyoming State office of the Natural Resources Conservation Service, have built the life–work balance they had been seeking.

“We’ve really gotten settled here,” she said. “When we left Houston, it was hard to leave our community and I was really nervous about that. But we found it here in Casper, with access to the mountain, the Bighorns and the winds, and we’ve met so many wonderful people.”

“I’m just proud to live in Casper, we love it here and we’ve made it our home.”