Kaanon is the CEO of the Stanislaus Community Foundation, a nonprofit organization that provides philanthropic tools and resources, supports the community through grants and scholarships and focuses on education programs such as Stanislaus READS! and Stanislaus Futures. The foundation is directly involved at Stan State on several fronts, including the awarding of scholarships to University nursing students through their Health Careers Fund.
As a leader within the community, Kaanon had many insights to share about developing the tools to be a successful leader and to cultivate curiosity. One of the biggest takeaways from her speech was the importance of embracing complexity and ambiguity.
“Complexity is the nature of reality,” Kaanon said. “You’re never stepping in the same river twice, and that’s okay.”
Kaanon is no stranger to the ambiguity of life. She was born in Baghdad, Iraq, and emigrated with her family when she was five years old. For the next two years, she lived in many different places in Europe, including Athens, Greece, where she survived an earthquake and had to live in a tent for six weeks because aftershocks made it difficult to move back home. As an Assyrian, her native language is Aramaic, so she learned English when she lived in Canada at age seven. She moved to Modesto when she was 15, attending Beyer High School and Modesto Junior College before transferring to UC Davis. Later in life, she went through a divorce, and just three years ago, she had a prophylactic double mastectomy.
“We have a choice as human beings and as leaders,” Kaanon said. “We can choose to step into that expansive place, or we can choose to become victims of circumstance. My hope is that through my life, I’ll always choose to step into more expansion, more compassion, more curiosity and more learning.”
Women’s Campus Connection is a group of campus women leaders who collaborate to schedule distinguished women to speak to faculty, staff, administrators and students about their stories and/or reflections on leadership. The Women’s Campus Connection meetings are open to the entire campus community.