Joni Holifield
Joni Holifield is the founder and president of HeartSmiles, a nonprofit that provides underserved youth in Baltimore with personal and professional development opportunities to help them reach their full potential. Holifield is an entrepreneur, speaker, and nonprofit leader dedicated to serving her community.
Holifield was raised in West Baltimore and attended Lake Clifton High School. She began her career at McDonalds, where she was quickly promoted to the manager of two franchises. She then accepted a role as a call center employee at Comcast and eventually worked her way up to director-level at a top-performing call center in Pennsylvania.
In 2015, Freddie Gray was murdered less than a mile from Holifield's childhood home. On TV, Holifield watched as her community responded with outrage. As a result, Holifield felt compelled to leave her career in corporate America and returned to Baltimore to establish HeartSmiles. She felt the pain and suffering of Baltimore youth and set out to provide them with access to career development resources that could change their futures. Since its inception in 2015, HeartSmiles has provided over $1 million in wages to youth and now serves over 1,500 youth annually. In 2024, high school seniors in HeartSmiles programming had a graduation rate of 100 percent, exceeding Baltimore's average of 70 percent.
In addition to founding HeartSmiles, Holifield is the founder and leadership coach of Leading for Longevity, where she offers leadership training and development services to businesses across all industries. She has also held a leadership position at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health Center for Adolescent Health's Youth Advisory Board.
Holifield has spoken at multiple Bloomberg American Health Initiative Summits on panels discussing inequities in public health and the state of youth in Baltimore. Her work has been featured in The Washington Post, CBS News, Hopkins Bloomberg Public Health Magazine, Baltimore Magazine, WMAR News, and more.