100 in 100, Ask a Leading Woman

Ask a Leading Woman with Lorrie Janatopoulos

Held Friday, April 8th, 2022

Lorrie shared her life experiences and current work followed by a Q & A session. No recording is available for this session.

Smiling woman with short grey hair and red frame glasses. She is wearing a grey turtleneck.

Lorrie Janatopoulos

Director of CareerForce at the Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development

Lorrie Janatopoulos is the CareerForce Director at MN DEED. CareerForce is the State of Minnesota’s official employment resource, providing career exploration, job search, labor market information and other services at no cost to job seekers and employers. CareerForce connects people who need work with the employers who need them, with a focus on helping people get on a career path to family-sustaining employment. The CareerForce Division employs approximately 150 workforce development professionals, providing services to over 50 CareerForce Centers located across Minnesota and working in partnership with the network of public, nonprofit, and private organizations forming the workforce development system.

A native of Greater Minnesota, Janatopoulos had more than two decades of non-profit work experience prior to coming to DEED in 2019. Most of her career was spent as the Planning Director at Arrowhead Economic Opportunity Agency (AEOA), a community action agency headquartered in Virginia, Minnesota. At AEOA, Janatopoulos was responsible for developing programs that met the needs of people experiencing poverty ranging from housing development to employment programs and programs for youth and seniors. Janatopoulos holds a master’s degree in public affairs from the Humphrey School of Public Affairs at the University of Minnesota. In 2016, Janatopoulos was named a Bush Foundation Fellow. Lorrie lives with her wife, Sharon Chadwick, in the woods a bit south of the City Eveleth.

About Ask a Leading Woman

Welcome to our Ask A Leading Woman series, one of our organization’s projects dedicated to featuring amazing women leaders in rural! Currently, the majority of leadership roles in rural are held by men, meaning we don’t always get the same opportunity to witness strong women leadership. Ask a Leading Woman is an opportunity for our community to actively engage with leading women by hearing about their pathway to leadership and asking questions. Learn more information here.

Another way we highlight rural women is through our Spotlight Profiles! While they are similar projects in that they highlight women doing incredible work, they differ in how they’re executed. Spotlight Profiles are not public meetings, but the recordings are available on our YouTube. These go more in-depth about their story, what they do, and their advice.