The United Way of Greater Cleveland has hired Sharon Sobol Jordan as its next president and chief executive officer, the organization announced Monday.
Jordan replaces Augie Napoli, who has led the social services funding organization since 2016. Jordan has experience across Northeast Ohio’s nonprofit sector and is a former chief of staff to Cuyahoga County Executive Armond Budish.
“Sharon has a track record of successfully leading and making change within organizations from the inside out,” United Way board chair Paul Dolan, the CEO of the Cleveland Guardians, said in a news release. “Sharon is a coalition and relationship builder and has built trusted, lasting relationships across the Greater Cleveland community.”
A former leader of the human services nonprofit Centers for Families and Children, Jordan currently serves as interim CEO of broadband nonprofit Digital C. She helped set up Unify Labs, a technology nonprofit, and worked as Cleveland law director under Mayor Michael R. White. She will become the first female CEO of the United Way of Greater Cleveland.
Jordan, a Cleveland native, takes charge of the United Way more than two years after it shifted the way it funds services in Northeast Ohio. Rather than spread donations across a wide range of groups, the United Way now focuses its spending on issues like poverty through a “Community Hub for Basic Needs,” agency leaders have said.
“United Way of Greater Cleveland’s core belief that social and economic change cannot be achieved without racial justice, together with its focus on permanently disrupting the cycle of intergenerational poverty, deeply resonates with me,” Jordan said in the news release.
