Alumni Profiles
Jill Stewart Waibel
Jill Stewart Waibel
Degree: BS’92, Life Member
Dancing With Stars
Inspired by her friend Ryan White’s five-year battle with AIDS, Jill Waibel came up with an idea that literally got IU students up on their feet.
She was a junior and incoming student-body president at Hamilton Heights High School in Cicero, Ind., when White, a hemophiliac who contracted AIDS through a blood transfusion at age 13, enrolled in the school. Jill became one of his closest friends, driving him to school and accompanying him to appointments at Riley Hospital for Children in Indianapolis.
Shortly after White succumbed to the disease in 1990, Jill came across a video of students dancing to raise money for charity. A member of the IU Student Alumni Association at the time, she thought, “We should do something like that at IU.”
Thus, in 1991, Dance Marathon — an annual 36-hour dance extravaganza held on the Bloomington campus — was born.
Dance Marathon is now the second largest student-run philanthropic organization in the country, raising more than $10 million to help children at Riley Hospital over the past 20 years. The event not only funds important pediatric research and care, the yearlong planning for it — which involves more than 1,000 student volunteers — provides a valuable experience for IU students.
“If you look at the individuals involved, especially the student leaders, they go on to become incredibly successful in their lives,” says Jill. “College is [often regarded] as one of the most self-centered times in a young person’s life but when students do something philanthropic [like Dance Marathon], it sets the tone for the rest of their lives. They get a lot out of ‘paying it forward’ to others.”
Now a successful Miami dermatologist, Jill Waibel continues to pay it forward. She has also left a legacy at IU that is having an impact on thousands of lives twenty years on.
