By Lindsay Walker
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Growing up in rural Wisconsin, Janelle Elias always wanted to be a teacher. She would make homemade worksheets and coerce her friends into playing school with her. 

Decades later, Elias was selected in January 2022 to serve as vice president of strategy and advancement for Rio Salado College in Tempe; her work there led to her selection as Businesswoman of the Year by the Tempe Chamber of Commerce. 

“Honestly, I was surprised, but it's such an honor because I'm more of an introverted person,” she said. “I'm so focused on the business that I'm always focused on outcomes, the projects and outcomes of the work. So to have a focus placed on me as a leader is incredibly humbling, and it's pretty amazing. I've never been recognized in this level of honor before and for the Chamber to see me as a leader, it was just really powerful for me and validating that I'm doing a great thing for our community, and for our institution.”

Elias said she’s not one to talk about herself, instead choosing to focus on the work at Rio Salado, which she calls a “college without walls.” 

“We're highly scalable in our offerings, and we are an educational solution for a lot of non-traditional students,” she said. “So both the ability to go wherever the learners may be and meet them where they are both metaphorically and also academically, it's a very innovative business model. And because it was founded to be elastic, like the business systems and the processes and the governance and the way we structured our whole system in our delivery of online learning, is highly unique in any institution I've seen in higher ed. Most institutions have a separate online division. But this is ingrained deeply into the core of how Rio Salado College was designed.”

Accessible higher education is near and dear to Elias, having gotten her start at Chandler-Gilbert Community College in the East Valley shortly after graduating from high school . As a first-generation college student, the credits Elias earned there helped her receive her bachelor’s degree in English Literature when she lived in Savannah, Georgia. Elias returned to the Valley 20 years ago to work as a the Assistant Dean of the IT department, the first woman to have the role. After 12 years, she moved over to Rio Salado in 2016.

Elias said that working as a woman in the male-dominated fields of IT and technology prepared her well for her role as an executive. 

“I started working as a federal student worker on campus [as an undergraduate] in the campus computer lab, and this is really where I really got to find this intersection between IT and technology, and that I have this ability to translate pretty technical things in layman's terms,” she said. “So my background in teaching and education and English prepared me well to learn IT, and then I just loved the creativity of building my own systems, products and tools. I learned E-publishing, web design, how to create online courses. I started my own business at one point and did that freelance, so it really helped my career move more towards IT.”

While she and her family live in Mesa, Elias works in Tempe and hopes to strengthen her ties to the local community, business or otherwise. 

“I feel like Tempe really aims to support small business owners and entrepreneurs,” she said. “At Rio, we teach entrepreneurship. We have so many students, and they have so many great small business ideas. So if we can continue to shop local and support not only female leaders, but women, small business owners and entrepreneurs, that's really important to our economic growth. It's important to keep shining a light on the good work of our female leaders in our community. I'd love to continue to meet and learn from other strong female leaders across the community of Tempe.”