Officials with the Greater Stockton Chamber of Commerce recently announced the selection of Jordan Giannoni Harless as its 2024 ATHENA Young Professional Leadership Award recipient. Past ATHENA’s, Delta College staff, Stockton Chamber staff and Board Members, and Harless’ friends and family surprised her with the news on Wednesday, Sept. 18, 2024, after an Academic Senate meeting at Delta College.
The ATHENA Young Professional Leadership Award is dedicated to recognizing the next generation of women leaders in San Joaquin County. This award honors an individual who has demonstrated excellence, creativity, and initiative in her business or profession; provides valuable service to improve the quality of life for others in her community; and clearly serves as a role model for young women personally and professionally. The nominee must be younger than 40 years old on Oct. 1 of the Award Year.
The ATHENA Awards will be presented at the annual ATHENA Awards Luncheon on Nov. 21, 2024. Tickets plus sponsorship for this high-profile event are available through the Stockton Chamber of Commerce website: https://stocktonchamber.org/athena-awards/.
Harless is a San Joaquin County native who returned to Stockton 10 years ago to serve her home community as an employee at San Joaquin Delta College. An alumna of Delta College herself, the honoree feels a special connection to the young adults starting their higher education journeys in Stockton. During her first two years employed with Delta College, Harless served as the Classified Senate’s Vice President and earned her Master of Business Administration (MBA) degree through UC Davis’s night and weekend program. Shortly after completing her MBA, Harless secured a full-time faculty role at Delta and has been teaching for the last seven years. She has remained an active member of Delta’s campus community in teaching courses in both Business and English, serving as the coordinator for all campus tutoring services, and participating in the shared governance process. In addition to teaching, she has served terms as a member of several of Delta College’s shared governance committees to help shape the institution’s future. Some of her committee work has included Student Success and Equity, Distance Education, Employee Diversity and Professional Development, and she currently serves on the campus’s Planning and Budget Committee as well as the college’s Academic Senate. In 2019, she was chosen by Delta’s Vice President of Instruction to serve as a faculty lead to help the college author its Institutional Self-Evaluation Report to ensure Delta College had a successful accreditation review and visit from the Accrediting Commission for Community and Junior Colleges (ACCJC). In March of 2020, the college was visited by the review committee and was successful in defending their accreditation. Harless has remained on the college’s accreditation committee and recently helped author the mid-term report in preparation for the next accreditation visit in 2027.
Outside of Delta College, Harless served the California Community College Chancellor’s Office as the Northern California Regional Coordinator for the California Community College Success Network (3CSN) from 2018-2020. She received her doctorate degree from the Johns Hopkins University in May 2023 after successfully defending her doctoral research and now aspires to become an administrator at Delta College.
First learning about local charities as a teen and together with her family, she began “adopting” a mother and her children from the Women’s Center each year during the holiday season and used money earned from her part-time job to donate gifts and personal items. In the years since, Harless has developed a passion for women’s issues and makes financial donations to various organizations supporting women and children every year.
In the March 2024 election, she became the first woman to ever win the Area 5 seat on the San Joaquin County Board of Education. She has continuously set an example that young women can achieve academic and financial success as well as independence, regardless of where they begin their academic or professional journeys.
ATHENA International partners with hundreds of chambers of commerce, colleges and universities, corporations, women’s organizations and affiliate communities in 48 states and 11 countries. Over 8,000 leaders have been recognized with the ATHENA Leadership award in over 500 regions worldwide. The Greater Stockton Chamber of Commerce is home to one of the longest running ATHENA programs in the nation, with the first Stockton ATHENA Award being presented in 1986. The ATHENA Young Professional Leadership Award was introduced locally in November 2010.
