ABOUT US
JANNA HENRICHSEN
VICE PRESIDENT OF LEADERSHIP FOUNDATION
Janna Henrichsen has served Leadership Foundation since 2007, when the board invited her to share the ministry with her parents, Walt and Leette. Now that both have been called to the Lord, she labors independently, in the pattern they established. At the heart of her ministry is the discipleship of women, through Bible study and walking alongside them in faith; she also teaches classic literature in book clubs for men and women.
Her love of literature began at age eleven, when her father paid her to read the classics — Anna Karenina being the most memorable. The discussions that followed set her on the path to a PhD from Claremont Graduate University. After teaching in academia, businessmen asked her to bring literary analysis to the challenges of leadership. The invitations widened — lawyers, doctors, homeschooling mothers, teenagers, retirees — until she was offering the equivalent of a graduate class in informal settings. She explores how great works call us to examine life’s purpose and seek a deeper hope in eternity, a focus drawn from her own faith.
She learned to study Scripture chiefly from Walt and Leette — at the dinner table, in heart-to-heart conversations, and traveling with her father as he expounded in the Bible — and in 2006 women began asking her teach studies and speak at conferences.
She lives in Indianapolis, close to her brother’s family, in whose daily life she is fully and joyfully at home.
LEETTE HENRICHSEN
CO-FOUNDER AND WIFE OF WALTER HENRICHSEN
At age 11, Leette Dillon came to Christ. After graduating from the University of Minnesota, she pursued training with The Navigators, and while ministering with them in Nebraska, she met Walt. For 54 years Leette delighted in being the wife of Walter.
Along with raising the children, Leette had the privilege of investing in women’s lives, especially teaching Bible studies. What started in the home and neighborhood expanded into travels with Walter once the children were out of school. As age limited Walter’s ability to travel, Leadership Foundation frequently used their home as the location for teaching and discipleship, with Leette providing the ministry of hospitality.
She has also developed a Women of the Bible study series that has blessed many women across the country. When Walter went to be with Jesus, Leette continued to live in their Indianapolis apartment, ministering to ladies through Bible study, fellowship and correspondence until the Lord called her home in 2025.
WALTER HENRICHSEN
FOUNDER OF LEADERSHIP FOUNDATION
Walter Henrichsen Jr. was born in 1934 in Berkeley, California. At the age of 19, he met the Lord, an after completion this undergraduate degree at Central College in Iowa, he obtained his Master’s of Divinity at Western Theological Seminary and was ordained in the Reformed Church of America.
Upon completing seminary, Walt pursued a life given to ministry. The Billy Graham Crusade introduced him to The Navigators, with whom Walt worked from 1960-1978. In the summer of 1960, he was working at the Navigator Bible Camp in Maranatha, Nebraska, when he met Leette Dillon, who was head counselor for the girls.
After two summers serving together, Walt proposed to Leette. They married in June of 1962 at Glen Eyrie Castle in Colorado Springs. Together, they joined the collegiate ministry in Michigan, where their eldest two children, Deborah and Walter, were born. The Navigators moved the family to Texas, where Jonathan and Janna were born. In 1972, the family moved to Colorado Springs, where Walter Jr. went to be with the Lord. In 1975, the Navigators sent the Henrichsen family to New Zealand, where Walter traveled the Pacific Rim, administrating over Nav missionaries.
Walter’s gift for teaching and counseling lay men became apparent early in his work with the Navigators. By 1975, businessmen were requesting that Walt focus his ministry towards the laity. After the return from New Zealand, the Navigators agreed that he should prioritize this ministry and released him from their staff to pursue this calling.
In 1980, a group of Christian businessmen established a non-profit, Leadership Foundation Inc., to facilitate Walt’s full-time lay ministry. In addition to writing several books and devotionals, Walt worked to help men integrate their walk with Christ into their daily lives and vocations.
Walter continued this work through a family move to San Diego in 1987, where first Leette and then Janna were invited to join in the ministry by his board. By 2015, poor health and a desire to be close to Jonathan’s family lead Walt, Leette and Janna to move to Indianapolis, IN. Walter went to be with the Lord in August of 2016.
JOY IN OUR JOURNEY
MEMOIR
Joy in Our Journey is a powerful testimony of God’s faithfulness through love, ministry, hardship, and loss. Through Walt and Leette’s story — beginning with their personal commitments to Christ, unfolding through years of service, and deepened by the trials of illness and suffering — you see what it looks like to trust God not just in the highlights, but in the hardest moments.
Their journey is honest, deeply rooted in Scripture, and marked by a steady confidence that the Lord keeps His promises Joy In Our Journey. This memoir invites readers to reflect on their own walk with God and discover that real joy is not found in ease, but in faithfully following Him every step of the way.