Laura Stille

Through the years, we’ve worked with exceptional individuals who understand local challenges facing their communities, and have the passion and the vision to create opportunities where people can make healthy choices where they live, work, learn, play and pray. We’re recognizing these individuals, who have been nominated by their peers and colleagues, to showcase their commitment to making the healthy choice, the easy choice.

As a registered dietician, Laura Stille knows the importance of healthy eating and an active lifestyle for every person. After moving to Spartanburg 18 years ago, she was asked to get involved in the Nutrition Council and knew she could use her skills to make a bigger difference to improve the health of an entire community.

As a past chair of the Partners for Active Living board of directors for six years, she worked to fix trail, park, walkability, and bikeability issues within Spartanburg to create safe spaces for people to play and be active. She helped in the development of 32 miles of trails as well as a central park that the entire community could use.

Laura says the work she does would be impossible without the help and support from her coworkers and community, stating, “That’s what it takes to get things done in a community. It’s never one person trying to get credit or do something alone; you have to work with partners.”

Laura now serves as a City Council member and has worked to increase funding for recreation within the City’s annual budget for both operations and capital improvements. The City is working on a new project of converting an underutilized baseball field into an urban farm/community garden in one of the lower income – transitional neighborhoods. She hopes to affect change in the children, which in the future Spartanburg, will become a community that recognizes the value of health and how it relates to quality of life, noting “healthier people are happier people.”