Hope & Olive president Jill Ullmer has dealt with a mental health disorder called Trichotillomania, a Body-Focused Repetitive Behavior (BFRB), for over 27 years. It causes her to pull out her eyebrows and eyelashes, but it is also common to pull hair from the scalp. After keeping her disorder a secret until 2016, she realized it was time to use her disorder for something good.

In 2016, Jill left her corporate America role and opened her own permanent makeup studio in Green Bay, WI – 3D Brows and Wellness. She knew first-hand how something as simple as a good set of eyebrows could boost one’s confidence; therefore, she set out on a mission to help others get this part of themselves back through her services. She made it her mission to break the stigma that often comes with why someone would choose to have a permanent makeup service done.

Jill not only specializes in eyebrows, but she also does 3D areola restoration (most common after breast reconstruction), skin needling, lip blushing, and tattoo lightening. In August of 2017, while being trained in tattoo lightening, she had a thought come over her that she couldn’t stop thinking about for weeks. She thought, “I could help sex trafficking survivors by lightening their branding tattoos,” and she immediately had a vision of creating a non-profit to serve those who would need this service.

For the next couple of months, Jill kept thinking about her vision. In October of 2017, while attending a networking conference, she ran into a colleague and friend who asked her how business was going. Jill felt compelled to share her idea to lighten branding tattoos by creating a non-profit to serve those in need. Her friend replied, “We need this in our community. You need to do this!” After hearing her friends response, Jill knew she needed to pursue her dream of creating the non-profit and got to work.