JPMorganChase Chairman Jamie Dimon Visits BEAM Circular and Stanislaus County Partners
Visit to Stanislaus County spotlights the community’s coordinated local investment — from Stanislaus Community Foundation, Stanislaus County, Stanislaus 2030, and BEAM Circular — in building the region's economic infrastructure.
JPMChase CEO Jamie Dimon (seated front, center) and members of his executive team meet with BEAM Circular CEO Karen Warner (seated front, second from left), Stanislaus 2030 Executive Director Amanda Hughes (seated front, second from right), BEAM Circular Board Member Lenny Mendonca (back, third from right) and local partners.
[Joint Press Release from BEAM Circular, Stanislaus County, Stanislaus Community Foundation, and Stanislaus 2030]
MODESTO, CA (August 4, 2026) — Jamie Dimon, Chairman and CEO of JPMorganChase, visited Stanislaus County today along with members of the firm's senior team, to meet with local leaders behind a cross-sector effort to build the Central Valley's economic infrastructure from the ground up. The visit brought together Stanislaus Community Foundation (SCF), Stanislaus County, Stanislaus 2030, and BEAM Circular, all part of the coalition responsible for turning an early economic diagnosis into a working pipeline of projects, new jobs, and local lending capacity.
Dimon’s visit included a lunch with local business and civic leaders and was part of JPMorganChase’s annual bus tour, which is taking place in California this year. The bus tour gives Dimon and the firm’s senior leaders an opportunity to hear directly from local customers and employees—as well as government, community, and business leaders—about local priorities that support long-term economic growth.
Stanislaus County’s economic development work traces back to 2019, when Stanislaus Community Foundation found that a healthy-looking labor market was masking a community with low-wage jobs. A Brookings Institution analysis commissioned by SCF and the Stanislaus County CEO’s office soon after found that only 13% of county jobs meet the bar of a “good job.” Rather than wait for outside intervention, the County and SCF turned early private and philanthropic seed funding into a $18 million in county American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) investment, launching Stanislaus 2030 in 2021 and BEAM Circular, a bio-industrial manufacturing initiative, in 2023.
These strategic investments have resulted in over $41 million in follow-on funding from state, federal, and private sources to support the Stanislaus 2030 and BEAM Circular project portfolios. The teams briefed JPMorganChase leadership on the early impact of these efforts, including the launch of 129 new childcare businesses, helping local suppliers win $8.7 million in new contracts, investing in 32 businesses working to turn local agricultural waste into valuable bio-based products, and launching new biomanufacturing training and workforce programs that will serve over 15,000 students and workers over the coming four years.
That infrastructure continues to grow: BEAM Circular is breaking ground this Fall on the California Bioeconomy Innovation Campus, a first-of-its-kind biomanufacturing scale-up facility backed by the California Jobs First Initiative. The local business procurement program seeded by Stanislaus 2030 is scaling to 14 counties. And SCF will launch the Stanislaus Community Loan Fund (SCLF) in January 2027 to deploy low-interest loans and guarantees to local CDFIs and small businesses across the region.
“We’ve challenged ourselves to think differently about the role government plays in economic development,” said Jody Hayes, Stanislaus County CEO. “That work has led to data-driven investments that have attracted additional capital and are advancing quality jobs and long-term growth in our community.”
“We didn't wait for outside investment to organize ourselves — we organized ourselves to be ready for outside investment,” said Marian Kaanon, President and CEO of Stanislaus Community Foundation. “For years, communities like ours have been told our best ideas leave and don't come back. We appreciate Jamie and the team coming to visit and learn more.”
"Stanislaus 2030 exists because this community decided to build its own solutions instead of waiting to be discovered," said Amanda Hughes, Executive Director of Stanislaus 2030. "We've spent the last three years turning a blueprint into a real pipeline — growing small businesses, advancing job training, and increasing childcare capacity. We’re proud of our story and welcomed the opportunity to share it with Jamie and his team.”
“What we shared today isn't a pilot program — it's a new industry cluster ready to generate accessible, high-quality jobs,” said Karen Warner, CEO of BEAM Circular. “We're proving that a leading agricultural region can also be a hub for visionary entrepreneurship and advanced, resilient manufacturing — built from the ground up, here in the North San Joaquin Valley.”
About the Local Hosts/Coalition
Stanislaus Community Foundation, Stanislaus County, Stanislaus 2030, and BEAM Circular are independent organizations working in coordination to build inclusive economic development infrastructure across Stanislaus County, including the Stanislaus 2030 Investment Blueprint, a new bio-industrial manufacturing cluster, and the forthcoming Stanislaus Community Loan Fund. Learn more at:
StanislausCF.org
Stanislaus2030.com
BeamCircular.org.
Media Contacts
Samantha Jones, Stanislaus Community Foundation
(209) 576-1806 | sjones@stanislauscf.org
Carissa Lucas, Stanislaus County
(209) 652-1111 | LucasC@StanCounty.com
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