About Jennifer
Jen Ellis brings over 25 years of leadership experience from her work with a global non-profit...
Speaker Testimonials
"Jen Ellis is a dynamic speaker who brings real-life examples of leadership..."
Real Leadership. Real Recovery.
Are you leading in a way that protects the people in your care from moral injury?
Leadership done well prevents it. Leadership done poorly creates it.
After 25 years in a global non-profit — and her own journey through complex PTSD and moral injury caused by poor leadership — Jen discovered that pain can be transformed into wholeness, and weakness into strength.
She speaks to and alongside frontline personnel and the behavioral health professionals who care for them — bringing honest, practical tools for leaders who want to prevent moral injury, and real hope for those already carrying it.
Jen is an excellent speaker and presenter on Moral Injury, its impact on individuals and the repair process. She is informed, and vulnerable yet strong in sharing her ongoing journey and connects with her audience. Jen is a gift to all helpers, healers and those yet to be helped and healed.
Daniel S. Nelson, M.A./LPCC | Clinic Site Director; Willmar, MN |Sagent Behavioral Health
About Jennifer
Jen Ellis brings over 25 years of leadership experience from her work with a global non-profit based in Australia. Her leadership roles spanned anti-trafficking work, communication, hospitality and events, and various training programs.
Her work took her to more than 20 countries and included helping guide the organization through a season of exponential growth—expanding from 60 to over 500 staff across multiple nations—before witnessing its later rapid decline.
These experiences gave Jen a front-row seat to both the impact of healthy leadership and the damage caused when authority is misused. Her insights are shaped not only by what she has observed but also by what she has lived—having both contributed and received leadership that was constructive and, at other times, damaging. With authenticity and practicality, she helps leaders discover how to lead from a whole soul and repair brokenness when it occurs.
In 2024, Jen and her Australian husband returned to the family farm in Minnesota to begin a new chapter. When not working, she enjoys gardening, painting, writing, wrangling their puppy, catching up with friends over coffee and good food, and connecting with her four adult children and two grandchildren.
Jennifer's Talks
Lead Like Their Lives Depend On It
Preventing and Mitigating Moral Injury as a Leader
In high-stakes environments, morally injurious events aren’t rare, they’re inevitable. The question isn’t whether your team will face them, but whether you’ve prepared them to navigate those moments without losing themselves in the process. Because what happens at work doesn’t stay at work.
This presentation equips leaders to recognize the conditions that create moral injury, and to develop practices to prevent and mitigate the effects of moral injury amongst those they lead, protecting their people—on the job and at home.
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Available as a keynote or interactive 2-3 hour workshop.
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Live Like Your Life Depends On It
Recognizing and Recovering from Moral Injury
Moral injury runs deeper than stress or burnout, and often occurs amongst frontline professionals such as healthcare, law enforcement, and the military, resulting from exposure to moral stresses. It is a wound against a person’s character, impacting on an individual’s self-image and world view. Moral injury frequently develops alongside PTSD symptoms and can be neglected through a lack of understanding about their differences and overlap.
In this presentation, Jen leverages her own journey with Moral injury to outline its symptoms and scope and help participants develop a framework that can make healing possible and provide a doorway to greater emotional and mental health, growth and resilience.
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Available as a keynote or 2-3 hour workshop.
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Listen Like Their Healing Depends On It
Recognizing and Addressing Moral Injury in Your Clients
Moral injury can look like trauma — but it isn't quite the same thing. Rooted in violations of deeply held values, it often goes unrecognized in clinical settings. These two interactive workshops are designed to change that.
Workshop 1: Understanding Its Presence and Intersection with Trauma
Providers explore how to define moral injury, recognize its indicators in clients — including disruptions in identity, guilt, shame, and betrayal — and distinguish it from PTSD and other co-occurring concerns.
Workshop 2: Moral Injury as a Lived Experience in Clients
Drawing on real stories and lived experience, this workshop deepens providers' understanding of moral injury through a human-centered lens, with a focus on the range and scope of its effects.
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Available individually or as a series.
What Clients Say
CLIENTS
Working With the Best
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