Sheila Ison Wellstone (August 18, 1944 – October 25, 2002) was born in Kentucky. Her family moved to Washington, DC, where as a teenager she met and fell in love with her future husband Paul Wellstone at the age of sixteen. She attended the University of Kentucky but dropped out at the age of nineteen to marry Paul, then a student at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.^[1] After her husband finished his PhD in political science, he accepted an offer to teach at Carleton College in Northfield, MN, and the couple moved to Minnesota in 1969.^[2] The couple had three children, David, Mark, and Marcia. While in Minnesota, Wellstone worked as a librarian at Northfield High School. She left that position upon her husband's successful campaign to become a U.S. Senator in 1990. She became an advocate for human rights, the environment, and peace. Wellstone focused much of her work on domestic violence, assisting survivors and pursuing policies to support its prevention. She briefly considered running for Governor of Minnesota in the 2002 election, but ultimately chose not to.^{[citation needed]}

While campaigning with her husband in his 2002 re-election campaign, she died in a plane crash near Eveleth, Minnesota, along with her husband and daughter Marcia. The Sheila Wellstone Institute continues her commitment to building power and visibility to ensure that ending violence against women and children is a national priority.^[3]