Heather Proctor

In 2020, in the wake of a community tragedy in Springfield, Illinois, Heather led the founding of the Illinois Light Initiative alongside four other women determined to turn collective grief into structural change. The coalition that grew out of that effort would become WeHealUS — a cross-sector partnership model that brings together public, private, and nonprofit resources for community health and healing.

Two years later, that coalition's work passed the Illinois Senate as Resolution SR0301, positioning Illinois as the first officially declared healing-centered state in the nation. Heather has since been engaged by other state governments and governor's offices as a national subject-matter consultant on parallel healing-centered frameworks.

At the peak of the COVID-era national mobilization, WeHealUS brought together nearly 100 organizations across 14 states — healthcare systems, government agencies, nonprofits, and businesses — through coordinated May campaigns, the Scars to STARs Summit, and trauma-informed training. Today, WeHealUS and the May Mental Health and Trauma Awareness Campaign continue to anchor that work, with the full suite of services available at wehealus.org.

Her path to this work wasn't theoretical. As a teenager, Heather spent several years on the mission field, an experience that shaped her early commitment to service. She later served as a military spouse and, separately, as a non-partisan municipal spouse, where she was deeply committed to mental health services, community engagement, wraparound services, and support for individuals experiencing homelessness. Over two decades of leadership across nonprofit, government, and private sectors followed — the foundation for everything WeHealUS does today.