Page 16 - BusinessWest Difference Makers 2021

Janine Fondon
Founder,
UnityFirst.com;
Professor, Bay
Path University
This Journalist, Educator, and Mentor Inspires Others with Her Unstoppable Energy
KBy George O’Brien
aren Fisk, director of Marketing and Communication for the Springfield Museums, calls Janine Fondon a “connector.”
And that’s just one of many words that can be used to describe the founder of UnityFirst.com, a national distributor of diversity-related e-news to corporations and diverse communities. Indeed, she is also an educator — she’s currently chair of the Undergraduate Communications Department at Bay Path University and has been an adjunct professor at many area
Leah Martin Photography
“As a team player, she connects people in various institutions who could work together for positive change. As the Leader of UnityFirst, she connects the public with black-led, owned, and operated businesses and institutions. As a teacher, she connects young people to ideas that empower them ... she helps nurture the seeds that grow into remarkable projects that make a difference.”
colleges and universities — as well as a journalist, public speaker, colleague, and mentor.
But ‘connector’ probably works best, and it most effectively sums up what she does in the Western Mass. community — and beyond.
“As a team player, she connects people in various institutions who could work together for positive change,” Fisk, who worked with Fondon to help bring the exhibit Voices of Resilience (more on that later) to the Museums, wrote in her nomination of Fondon as a Difference Maker. “As the Leader of UnityFirst, she connects the public with black-led, owned, and operated businesses and institutions. As a teacher, she connects young people to ideas that empower them ... she helps nurture the seeds that grow into remarkable projects that make a difference.”
Through all this work connecting people, Fondon, who relishes this
role, told BusinessWest that she strives to make the region a better place through the sharing of knowledge, ideas, goals, and dreams for the future.
During her time at Colgate University, a liberal-arts college in Upstate New York, Fondon recalled that she was encouraged to “raise your voice, be part of the world, and make a difference.” She did so there — she became part of a gospel choir, for example — and has done so throughout her life.
Part of her MO, if you will, is to inspire others by telling the stories of those who came before, those who blazed a trail, and those who, well, made of difference in the community and the world. This is especially true
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DIFFERENCE
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