Helene Neville

Helene Neville is a registered nurse, public health professional, cancer survivor, author, entrepreneur, and endurance athlete. She earned a high school diploma from Burlington High School and an associate degree from Iowa Western Community College in 1984. Over more than 42 years she has worked as a nurse in hospitals, clinics, rural communities, tribal health systems, correctional facilities, and public health programs across eight states, and served as a public health educator and liaison on federal grants focused on Gulf War illness. In 2002 she founded the Des Moines Marathon. As an endurance athlete she has run more than 16,600 miles across the United States, Canada, Mexico, and Puerto Rico, becoming the first person to run across all 50 U.S. states. In 2020, while working as a frontline COVID-19 travel nurse, she was diagnosed with Stage IV non-Hodgkin lymphoma and entered remission in 2021. She has been a North Dakota resident since 2020 and lives and trains in Jamestown.