Doubly Blessed: JANEL JORDA CELEBRATES THE 20TH ANNIVERSARY OF HER BUSINESS AND HER MARRIAGE
By Melissa Karen Sances
(Published in Northampton Living January 2025)
A lone clothesline stretched from Janel Jorda’s driveway to her Aunt MaryAnn’s. It sagged under the weight of two families’ wardrobes, but it was sturdy, too, holding a place for her five siblings and eight cousins. Her father made sure of it. A state prison guard in Pennsylvania, he stretched his paycheck across two households, and if he had a little extra, he’d slip it to a man in need at Sunday Mass. “I always took in my parents’ examples of kindness,” says Jorda, who now owns a digital media company in western Massachusetts. “When I started Web-tactics, I wanted to do well but I also wanted to do good.”
Jorda was always a good worker. A scrappy kid, she did what she could to help out her family, while putting time into her passions: photography, programming and graphic design. In the early ‘90s she made an impression on internet entrepreneur Seth Godin, who would sell his start-up, Yoyodyne, to Yahoo for almost 30 million dollars. After spending more than a decade working for corporations, Jorda decided to invest in herself.
In 2004 Web-tactics’ motto was “simple, effective and affordable web design,” but it wasn’t long before it expanded to management, marketing and drone photography. Word-of-mouth was Jorda’s not-so-secret weapon; eventually she was designing sites for clients like Western Mass Heating, Cooling & Plumbing and the Northampton Police Department. “That’s one of the beautiful parts of living in this area,” she says. “People know each other,” and companies want to work together.
When drone technology emerged, Jorda became a certified pilot and thrilled at how it leveled up her business. She loves starting her day at 4 a.m. “locked and loaded,” her drone at the ready to capture the sun rising over the Valley.
As Jorda’s business took off, she was introduced to her future wife, Karla Youngblood. “You’ll really like her,” Jorda’s friend told her. “She’s really tall like you.” Jorda, who is 5’10,” appreciated that Youngblood stood at 6’1” and had a similar sense of humor. On their first date at Fitzwilly’s in Northampton, the bartender poured them a drink and kept tabs on their dinner reservation across the street. While the two women chatted away, the barkeep called the Eastside Grill and soon sent them on their way.
“It was a Saturday evening, and it was packed,” Jorda remembers. “And as we were crossing the street, a car almost hit us. Karla grabbed my hand like, ‘Schwing!’ I felt a little shock when our hands touched.”
At dinner, they barely tasted their food. While Youngblood was a Southern Baptist from Texas, and Jorda a Polish Catholic from Pennsylvania, they shared a love of the Valley, their families and their work. As Associate Vice President for Facilities Management at Mount Holyoke College, Youngblood similarly interacts with multiple contractors and also oversees the school’s geothermal project.
Their mutual love of animals drove them to rescue Marley, Ziggi and Drugi from the St. Croix Animal Shelter in the U.S. Virgin Islands, the Out of the Woods Animal Shelter in Arkansas, and the Leflore County Humane Society in Mississippi, respectively. Drugi, pronounced “Droo-ghee” (“it’s Polish, like me,” says Jorda) was left in a safety deposit box and had to have one eye removed; today he’s “13 going on two,” with the spunk of a puppy. Jorda immediately began working for free for the humane society. She has a dozen current and past pro bono clients, both local and national, that advocate for disadvantaged animals and humans.
“We’re very blessed,” she says. “We have money in the bank that we give to people who need it. I don’t take anything for granted: That’s how I was raised.”
EASTHAMPTON — The city will launch a redesigned website in the coming months that officials believe will be easier for residents and visitors to use.
