President Jasken and 2025 graduate Janiah Fields honored at Top 100 Women Awards Celebration

McDaniel College President Julia Jasken has been honored for the second time as one of Maryland’s Top 100 Women by The Daily Record. She was named to the 2025 list in recognition of her professional accomplishments, community leadership, and mentorship. 

A panel of business and legal professionals, past Top 100 Women honorees, and a representative of The Daily Record selected this year’s recipients, who were recognized during the award’s 30th anniversary celebration on May 5. 

Also, Psychology major Janiah Fields, who graduated from McDaniel on May 23, won the 2025 Top 100 Women Scholarship, which was presented during the event. The Circle of Excellence Top 100 Women honorees annually choose one recipient from a Maryland college or university who emulates the qualities of a Top 100 Woman for the $3,000 scholarship. 

According to The Daily Record, Top 100 Women have shaped the business landscape over the past 30 years.

“On this 30th anniversary, The Daily Record is a proud trailblazer, honoring women leaders before it was the norm. We congratulate and celebrate this year’s honorees and the many women who have been recognized as one of Maryland’s Top 100 Women over the past 30 years,” said Suzanne Fischer-Huettner, managing director of BridgeTower Media/The Daily Record.

A champion of both the liberal arts and McDaniel’s student-centered mission, President Jasken has overseen many of the college’s most important strategic initiatives and is widely respected for her contributions to higher education. As a top woman leader in the State of Maryland, she serves on the Board of Trustees of the Maryland Independent College and University Association (MICUA) and on the Board of Directors for Baltimore’s CollegeBound Foundation and the Carroll County Chamber of Commerce. She also represents the Centennial Conference on the NCAA Division III Presidents Council, the highest governing body in Division III athletics. 

In addition to being named to The Daily Record’s Top 100 Women list in both 2022 and 2025, President Jasken was recognized as a 2023 Influential Marylander and has made the publication’s Higher Education Power List in 2022, 2023, and 2024. In 2024, she was also selected among The Baltimore Sun’s Women to Watch and recognized by the Girl Scouts of Central Maryland with their Distinguished Women Award. She was a 2023 recipient of the Baltimore Business Journal’s Enterprising Women of Excellence award.

Janiah Fields of Baltimore, who graduated magna cum laude with departmental honors in Psychology, has used her degree to advocate for Black youth mental health. She is pursuing a graduate degree in Clinical Psychology. 

During her time at McDaniel, she was an outreach specialist in the Wellness Center and interned as a research assistant for the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Fields held numerous leadership roles at McDaniel, including resident assistant, mentor for the EDGE Experience Program, member of the President’s Advisory Council of Students, and president of the McDaniel chapter of the Psi Chi international honor society in Psychology. She also facilitated programming related to Black youth suicide prevention at the national level, which led to an invitation to The White House for the release of the 2024 National Strategy for Suicide Prevention and Federal Action Plan.