Citizen of the Year Award

Professional Photographer, Jan Regan of Jan Regan Photography has been named Citizen of the Year by the Geneva Area Chamber of Commerce and will be honored at a dinner sponsored by Lyons National Bank.  

This award has been given annually for the last 42 years to an individual   who has unselfishly given to the community and who has created a more dignified, unique place in which we all work and live.

“We are proud to present this award to Jan Regan who has made outstanding contributions to our community through her numerous volunteer efforts to many committees and organizations in the Geneva Area” said President Rob Gladden.

Regan’s volunteerism is well rounded and substantial.  She has been at the beginning of numerous projects and organizations, and helped shape them as planning and implementation progressed.  With her father, Thorn Regan, they founded Benchmark Geneva, an effort to get benches along the lakefront.  This project will be completed this spring.  As a longtime board member and past president of Geneva Community Projects, Jan helped establish the Geneva Community Playground and the Seneca Lake Whale Watch Festival.  As Run Coordinator of the Musselman Triathlon, she designed the run portion of the course through Geneva, and serves on the Race Committee.  She mentors through the Boys and Girls Club Mentoring Program, as well as through school shadowing requests, allowing groups of children to come to her studio and darkroom or visiting schools to help in creative programming.  A program that is just underway, One Book Project, will involve all of Geneva reading the same book, with special reading and discussion events.  Jan has been past president of the board of Ontario County Day Care, vice chair of Geneva Human Rights Commission, and vice president of the Ontario County Arts Council. 

Her charitable in-kind contributions have helped many organizations and causes, from cancer fundraisers, ATHENA Geneva publicity and publications, the Boys and Girls Club Capital Campaign, Boys and Girls Club picture of the week and countless donations of gift certificates.  In a nice arrangement, Regan does the photography for St. Peter’s Arts Academy in exchange for her mentoree to enroll in the junior choir and for piano lessons.  For two years, Regan sponsored the Jan Regan Photography Challengers Baseball Team through Ontario ARC, and she recently donated fifty large framed photographs that decorate the walls of the ARC’s new facilities; for many years she volunteered for the Office of the Aging and delivered Meals on Wheels.  She was chosen to serve as the emcee for the recent Geneva Bicentennial Celebration.  Jan is an avid runner and has run eight marathons including a marathon for the Arthritis Foundation for which she raised $5,000.

Jan is married to Chip Capraro and they have 2 children, Benjamin who graduates from University of Chicago in June and will begin a PhD program at Penn in the fall, and Peter, a sophomore at Columbia University.