Kelly Entzel

My professional journey has been deeply shaped by my experiences with grief and my passion for supporting others. I was a teacher for 13 years, and I'm currently a library manager at a university where I've been for just under a year. Two years ago, my sister and I founded Wildflowers of Hope, a nonprofit that provides pregnancy and infant loss support in the Red River Valley region of Grand Forks, North Dakota. The organization was born from the hardest year of our lives when we lost my third baby at a genetic condition. We got to spend an hour with her, and in our grief, we realized our region didn't have much support for pregnancy and infant loss. We knew what it was like to lose babies at all stages, and through our grief and lack of support, we wanted to provide that for other individuals and families in our area. Founding Wildflowers of Hope has been my greatest professional accomplishment because it combines all of my education, my years of experience in teaching and supporting others, and puts it into something I'm passionate about, which is grief support. Looking back, it's wild how what I thought my professional career was going to look like in education has morphed into something different. I still educate and help people, but it all stems from that grief instead of the teaching part. I also serve on the Education Foundation for the East Grand Forks school district and am fairly active in my kids' school.