Recently named the Christian Author of the Year in Atlanta, award-winning writer and educator Jeanne L. Enstad is publishing her second book, “The Final Score,” with a play-on-words title and theme inspired by her baseball enthusiast grandsons, Archer and Stone. This latest accolade is a continuation of Ms. Enstad’s excellence, having won the Citizen of the Year Award from her local chamber of commerce, the Ohio Volunteer of the Year Award, two Cancer Survivor Awards, and an Educator of the Year Award. Perennially seeking to positively impact people’s lives, her personal mission is to guide people through their crises to have a life worth living and make a permanent impact, one life at a time. Living by her motto “I’m just one, but I am one and will make a difference in the lives of others,” she feels blessed to have cultivated a healthy attitude that has allowed her to push through all the blows that life has dealt her.
Having struggled with her health throughout her career, Ms. Enstad persevered even when her doctor said that she would never walk again. Proving that doctor wrong, she drew on her three decades of experience to write her first book, an autobiography titled “A Journey of Hope to Heaven & Back,” which was published by Xulon Press in 2018. Ms. Enstad has chronicled how she overcame five open-heart surgeries, ovarian and breast cancer, strokes, a head-on car accident, gangrene in both legs, loneliness, job and financial loss, divorce, a heart attack, illnesses, surgeries, and more. Her motivational speaking and coaching have given her the ability to greatly expand her audience by allowing her to be a featured speaker on Christian television shows as well as maintain a vital social media presence, a blog, and a podcast in addition to producing a movie based on her autobiography in hopes of helping others in similar situations. Attributing much of her success to her faith and to her family, Ms. Enstad has accrued considerable expertise in the fields of religion and wellness and is continually driven to help people connect with their own innate gifts and guide them to finding success.
With a work ethic inspired by her childhood growing up on a farm, where there was always work to be done, Ms. Enstad earned an associate degree in elementary education and teaching from Bowling Green State University Firelands, followed by completing early childhood and teaching coursework at the Ohio State University. From 1995 to 2015, she was a preschool teacher and program and center director for the Ohio State University Extension and the 4-H youth development and program director for the Ford Motor Company. Additionally, Ms. Enstad established One Journey in 2006, where she excels as an author, motivational speaker, and life coach, and she also spent time as the fundraising manager for the Ohio State Office of Volunteerism.
