We recently sat down with Jill (Evans) Chapman to learn a little bit more about our sister. Here's what we found out:
"I'm not saying that I didn't have a plan when I went away to college...but maybe just that those plans changed..a lot," Jill said. Like going to UT--that wasn't the plan. The plan was to go to Mount Holyoke. Til her dad set her down and said here's how much money we've set aside for college. You can spend it however you want, but it's a finite number. Go to Mount Holyoke and you'll not be getting a new outfit every time you want to go to the dances at Yale or Dartmouth! So, new plan: UT. It really was a last-minute decision, so no plan for recruitment that year. When Jill went through rush as a sophomore, she had a plan for the house she thought she wanted to join. On pref night, she changed her mind. She felt something at the AXiD house she didn't feel at the house on San Antonio Street. She felt like she could be herself and she didn't feel the need to compete with her own sisters. New plan: AXiD. And it really was the most perfect fit.
Jill's college days were full of fun and campus activities. She lived in the house her junior and senior years and served on ExComm. As a journalism major, she was on staff at The Cactus and was editor of the monthly Student Union insert in The Daily Texan.
AXiD has been at the center of so much of Jill's life. The relationships, that's a given. We all have those sisters that are central to our lives. But even her career twists and turns have AXiD connections. Her first job out of college--the job that set her up for a career in recruiting/HR, was due in no small part to Beta Alpha's Kelly Orr. Years later, after building her own successful local staffing firm, Jill's business was acquired by a larger regional organization with Melinda Meador Torrison, Delta Psi, at the helm.
Those bonds of sisterhood are what keeps Jill involved with Alpha Xi Delta. She currently serves on the Board for the Houston Alumnae and is Recruitment VP for Montgomery County Panhellenic Alumnae Association.
In addition to serving sorority life, she chairs a committee for the Conroe Willis Woodlands Metro Go-Texan Committee of the Houston Livestock Show & Rodeo, serves on the Board of Directors of the Maui Educational Foundation for SHRM Hawaii, and is the Fifth Batallion Representative for the Citadel Family Association and on the Board of Directors for The Citadel Alum Association-Houston Chapter.
Jill is a performance consultant and member of the thought leaders speaker's bureau for Insperity--a human resource/business performance consulting company. (and in another Alpha Xi career coincidence, had the chance to work with another Beta Alpha sister, Suzanne Haugen, until Suzanne's recent retirement!). Since the late '90s, Jill has also been an instructor for the Rice University Sally Glasscock School every fall and spring semester.
When she's not working or volunteering, you'll find Jill exploring all that Maui HI has to offer. Jill and her husband, John, have the good fortune to live most of the year on Maui, with trips back to the mainland to spoil the three grandkids and see the family. Jill and John have three children--Chase, a senior at The Citadel-Military College of South Carolina; John Jr, with an advertising career in New York City; and, daughter Erin and son-in-law Mike, at home in Ft. Worth with JuJu and PaPaw's three most adorable grandkids.
