Two Nurses, One Bold Second Act: Founding a Nonprofit Hospice | Beyond Hospice co-founders, Kerry Keenan & Jill Schoenecker, Ep. 27

Kerry Keenan and Jill Schoenecker built their nursing careers around hospice care — right up until their health system sold the program to a for-profit company. They had two options: stay and keep doing work that no longer felt like theirs, or walk away. Between them, they'd tried a version of each, and neither stuck. Then a colleague said it out loud: “You can start your own business. How hard could it be?” So they did — sketching out a third option from scratch on a whiteboard in Jill's living room, built around one guiding idea from day one: “we don't want to be the biggest, we want to be the best.”

For any woman in her 40s or 50s facing a career change that doesn't sit right anymore, this episode shows there's a path beyond staying or walking away.

About the Guests

Kerry Keenan and Jill Schoenecker are the co-founders of Beyond Hospice, a nonprofit hospice program and division of Episcopal Homes, serving the greater Twin Cities area in Minnesota through both community-based hospice care and The Pillars, its residential hospice home.

Kerry Keenan, RN, MA, is co-founder and Executive Director of Beyond Hospice. Her nursing career spans 31 years, 25 of them in hospice care, including 12 years in academia as faculty and director at Century College. Kerry has presented locally and nationally, served as a surveyor for NLNAC, and currently serves on the Practice and Standards Committee for MNHPC and as a consultant for the Minnesota State Board of Nursing. She began her career as a nursing assistant before earning her LPN, ADN, and BSN from the College of St. Catherine's, and later her MA in nursing education from Bethel University.

Jill Schoenecker, RN, BSN, PHN, BA, certified CHAP leader, is co-founder and Director of Clinical Operations at Beyond Hospice. She brings over 20 years of nursing experience to the role, having started her career in acute care before transitioning to hospice, where she's spent the past four years in nursing leadership. Jill holds a BA in sociology, with a minor in psychology, from the University of Minnesota, and a BSN from St. Catherine University. Outside the clinical side, she's dedicated countless hours to community service through Dorothy Day Center, Open Arms, People Serving People, and Sharing and Caring Hands.

What You Will Learn

[05:48] How a living room meeting — a whiteboard, five colleagues, and a shared frustration — became the starting point for Beyond Hospice

[10:44] Why they partnered with Episcopal Homes instead