Utah Business has selected 10 women with enduring careers and exceptional impact, who we’ve named our “Most Influential Women.” Through their innovative efforts and inspiring examples, these women have significantly improved their workplaces, industries and Utah as a whole.
MOST INFLUENTIAL WOMEN: JeuneElle Jeffries
CEO | Boys & Girls Club of Northern Utah
Ten years ago, JeuneElle Jeffries sat at a graduation party for five young men, the first in their families to earn a high school diploma. It was a victory JeuneElle and her staff helped nurture into reality, and with the local superintendent in attendance, the room was filled with cake and cheers. But in the middle of the celebration, JeuneElle was struck by a realization.
According to JeuneElle, “I remember sitting there and thinking, ‘Now what?’”
She realized that while they had reached the finish line, they hadn’t prepared for the road ahead. That moment of clarity changed everything. JeuneElle decided to pivot the club’s mission from a focus on providing a safe place to building a clear path toward a career.
“I started to reach out to post-secondary education, to our technical colleges. I went and met with all of our large employers and many of our small employers and said, ‘What is it we need to be doing with our kids so that they can be better prepared and do better when they come to work for you?’”
One of the first things those companies asked was for help with awareness, so families knew what local jobs were available. Without any initial funding, JeuneElle launched a STEM career fair to bridge the gap. The annual event now coordinates 45 businesses and colleges to provide hands-on experiences for more than 2,500 teens.
Today, as the CEO of the Boys & Girls Club of Northern Utah, she has turned the traditional after-school club model on its head, evolving it into an engine for workforce development and community stability across Box Elder and Cache counties.
Under her direction, the club has grown to nine sites serving 400 children daily, but her vision extends far beyond the K-12 years. By partnering with over 40 local employers, she has integrated robotics and technical skills — like coding, basic electrical and mechanics — into the club’s curriculum.
“The likelihood that [a] company will pay for them to go to college, to finish classes, to get certifications goes up like 80-90%,” JeuneElle says.
The club was able to raise almost a million dollars in private money for the program. JeuneElle says, “We didn’t run a capital campaign. We call it our ‘silent capital campaign’ because it was just partners coming up and saying, ‘Okay, how do we partner?’ And to live in a community like that is amazing. And to facilitate a community like that, it’s worth everything.”
One achievement JeuneElle is particularly proud of is how the club stepped in when local families and businesses identified a desperate need for low-cost childcare. By mobilizing community partners to fund and operate two high-quality care centers in underserved areas, she helped bridge a critical gap. These centers offer discounts for school personnel and specific support for parents reentering the workforce or finishing their education, ensuring accessible care for children from infancy through school age.
This collaborative approach culminated in the Box Elder Community Campus, a centralized hub for education, health and welfare. The campus is a radical model of efficiency: It houses a domestic violence shelter, the offices of 11 other mom-and-pop nonprofits and a high-quality, zero-to-five childcare center specifically targeted at refugees, mothers reentering the workforce and school support staff. It even offers laundry and shower facilities for families experiencing homelessness, all with the goal of keeping parents employed before a potential crisis.
JeuneElle, started her journey at the Murray Boys & Girls Club in 1993. “I joke, I was raised by a CEO that taught me that Boys & Girls Club is about connecting with community … that we were there to really be a hub and pull everybody together and do what we can to provide the best services for kids and families and our communities.”
Her tenacity hasn’t gone unnoticed by the state’s top leaders. At the campus dedication, Senator Scott Sandall remarked, “Some people have persistence, and others have tenacity. JeuneElle has tenacity like I’ve never seen.”
“When you don’t compete with people, and instead you join together, the whole is so much bigger than the one,” she says. “We’re not fighting over the same dollar. If we spend the dollar well, there’s more dollars to be had.”
As she looks to expand this coordinated approach to other northern Utah communities, her advice to aspiring leaders is to shift their focus from scarcity to contribution. “By aligning your resources with these needs, you will find that you can make a meaningful impact and be amazed by the passionate people who join your cause.” For JeuneElle, success is no longer just about the graduation cake; it’s about ensuring that when a student walks out her doors, they are stepping directly into a career.