[8][9] She captained the Robinson Secondary School team in Fairfax, Virginia, to the 1984 state championship and won the under-19 national title with the Braddock Road Bluebelles the same summer.

[7] Ellis led UCLA to eight NCAA Women's College Cups, including seven in a row from 2003 to 2009, and won six straight Pacific-10 Conference titles from 2003 to 2008.

[7][15] Ellis has an all-time collegiate coaching record of 248 wins, 63 losses and 14 draws (248–63–14), compiled over 14 years with the Illinois Fighting Illini and UCLA Bruins.

[m 1][m 2] With a match against China on 15 December 2012, Ellis completed her first stint as interim head coach of U.S. women's national team with 5 wins, 2 draws, and no loss.

[m 1][m 2][m 3][m 4] [m 5][m 6][m 7] On 6 April 2014, U.S. Soccer announced the firing of Tom Sermanni and re-appointment of Ellis as interim head coach of the U.S. women's national team.

[24] According to an investigation,[25] Ellis was one of the USWNT leaders who did not take action after being told of a "hostile [coaching] environment" in 2014, and receiving in 2015 a player survey with "quite disturbing" allegations including sexual harassment.

Rapinoe had done so before matches with her National Women's Soccer League team, Seattle Reign FC, prior to camp in support of other professional athletes' similar protests.

[37] In June 2021, the National Women's Soccer League announced that Ellis would be the president of San Diego Wave FC, an expansion team, before their inaugural season.

[38] Ron Burkle, the San Diego Wave's owner, reportedly reached out to Ellis for consulting work, but she stated she wanted "to run the whole damn thing.

[40] On July 3, 2024, Brittany Alvarado, a former video and creative manager for the San Diego Wave, alleged that Jill Ellis, in her capacity as club president, had engaged in "a pattern of abusive behavior."

"[41] On July 29, 2024, Ellis filed a lawsuit against former Wave employee Brittany Alvarado in California Superior Court, claiming defamation and intentional interference with contractual relations.

[42] Ellis was born in Folkestone and grew up in Cowplain, a small village 11 miles north of Portsmouth on the southern coast of England.

She was awarded an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degree in 2016, and was inducted into Omicron Delta Kappa as an alumni member at the College of William and Mary in 2019.

[8] Her mother Margaret "was horrified", on learning of her plan to give up her lucrative job as a technical writer at Northern Telecom to work as an assistant coach with subsistence pay,[46] while John advised her to "do something substantial" instead.

[8] Ellis lives in Palmetto Bay, Florida, a suburb of Miami, with her wife Betsy Stephenson, whom she married in 2013, and their adopted daughter Lily Stephenson-Ellis.