From shaping the future of nursing to helping advance UCF’s boldest aspirations, Jayne Willis ’20DNP has spent a lifetime investing in people and creating pathways for others to succeed.
Long before she was leading teams across a major health system, Jayne Willis ’20DNP was a young nurse walking into a critical care unit for the first time, unsure, underprepared and acutely aware of what she didn’t yet know.
“I was scared to death,” she says.
That moment, standing at the edge of something bigger than herself, would become a defining pattern in Willis’ career. Again and again, she stepped into new challenges, grew into them and then reached back to support others.
Today, as a retired healthcare executive, director of UCF’s Nurse Executive DNP Program, lecturer in the College of Nursing and campus campaign volunteer, that same instinct guides her work.
It is a philosophy shaped not only by experience, but by mentorship, including her connection to Pegasus Professor and Professor Emerita Mary Lou Sole at the University of Central Florida.
When Willis returned to UCF to pursue her doctorate, she was building on decades of leadership while refining her vision for the future of nursing. Through that experience and her relationship with Sole, she deepened her focus on advancing practice, strengthening systems and preparing the next generation of healthcare leaders.
“Healthcare is becoming so complex. You have to always be learning and growing,” Willis says.
That mindset reflects the spirit of UCF’s Go For Launch campaign, which calls on leaders to accelerate discovery, expand opportunity and help shape what comes next.
Willis has spent her career doing exactly that.
From her earliest days on the hospital floor, she was drawn to the bigger picture. She did not just want to care for patients. She wanted to improve how care is delivered. She moved quickly into leadership, overseeing intensive care units, trauma programs and specialized services, eventually helping guide strategy across a growing health system.
Her career has been expansive, and deeply personal.
At one point, balancing a demanding role with raising three young children, Willis made the difficult decision to step away. The pace was relentless, and the responsibility was constant.
Then, just days before she planned to leave, the phone rang.
She was offered a senior leadership role with the opportunity to shape the future of nursing at the systems level.
“I think it was divine intervention,” she says.
She stayed.
In doing so, she stepped into one of the most influential chapters of her career, leading teams, mentoring nurses and helping shape the systems that support patient care across an entire organization.
That experience continues to shape her approach to leadership and service.
As a volunteer member of UCF’s Go For Launch Campus Leadership Team, Willis is helping advance a bold vision for the university’s future. It is a vision grounded in partnership, innovation and access, one that prepares students to lead in complex, high-impact fields like healthcare.
She understands what that preparation requires because she has lived it.
She has seen how mentorship can change a trajectory. She has experienced how education opens doors. She has led teams through moments where strong systems and thoughtful leadership make all the difference.
Through Go For Launch, she is helping ensure those opportunities continue to grow for future Knights, from supporting the education of future healthcare leaders to advancing the innovative learning environments, simulation technologies and academic programs that prepare students to meet the evolving needs of the profession.
For Willis, success has never been about reaching a final destination. It is about creating pathways for others and strengthening the systems that support them.
“I’m proud to be a nurse,” she says.
It is a statement grounded in decades of experience, but it also echoes something deeper. The young nurse who once walked into a critical care unit unsure of what came next never really left.
She just kept going.
And now, through her leadership, her mentorship and her commitment to UCF, she is helping ensure others have the chance to do the same.
