Jordan Powell – Candidate for Regional Advocate 2025 – Plains

Note: This is a candidate page for a Judge Foundry Election. Information on this page is provided by the candidate, and does not represent the opinions or positions of the Elections Committee or of Judge Foundry. For more information about this election, see the schedule and index for the Elections at the 2025 Annual Meeting.

Nomination Statement

Hello Judge Foundry Community!  My name is Jordan Powell.  I am a Level 2 judge located in Lincoln, NE.  I have been a certified judge for almost 9 years, and an L2 for 7 of those years.  The majority of my career has been spent head judging small to medium sized store level events and mentoring judge hopefuls in Nebraska and the surrounding area.  I have also been a conference host, presenter, and a team lead at regionals level events.

I am interested in becoming the Plains Regional Advocate because I want to help mentor the next generation of judges to ensure that players continue to have safe, high quality events for years to come.

Q1: Judge Program Direction

Question: This year, many members are uncertain about our future due to Wizards of the Coast’s announcement of a new Judge Program Manager role. How will you support your region through this uncertainty and potential transition?

Personally, I am extremely excited that Wizards is showing support for the judge program again.  I feel that one of the biggest issues facing judges and the judge program is that certified judges are not required to run events anymore and that has led to inconsistencies with the quality of events and less trust in judges from players and organizers.  In my experience, not having an officially recognized program has also led to fewer people showing interest in becoming a judge.  They don’t see value in certifying without an officially recognized path and minimal chance of staffing post certification.  Building out a new Wizards judge program will take time.  It will likely be at least another year before the foundation is built, and they may approach senior members of Judge Foundry to get started as they hold decades of experience building and running this type of program.  While that program is being built, events will continue to run and new and current judges will still need support.  I will continue to treat the current program as business-as-usual until there is a more concrete answer on where the new Wizards program goes and share anything I can about the transition as it becomes known.  The most important thing we can do right now is continue providing quality events for players and keep the program running strong.

Q2: Local Judges and Judging

Question: As a Regional Advocate, how will you support local judges and encourage local judging in your region?

I will be as available as I can be to help connect judges to one another to help build relationships and skills.  Education and mentoring has always been extremely important to me with respect to judging and I would like to put focus on connecting people so that we can all learn and grow together.  I feel that getting involved locally is one of the biggest hurdles to being a judge right now.  I’ve worked with several smaller stores that are just getting started with competitive events and it’s very hard to display the value of a judge to them when they don’t have a frame of reference of well run events vs poorly run events, or how much training and knowledge goes into a well polished judge.  As long as judges are not required to run events, I don’t know that there is a good solution to the problem with getting involved.  The best thing I think a judge can do is network with their local stores and try to explain to them the value they add to events.  I would love to hear others’ thoughts on this subject and try to workshop solution within the region for building organizer/judge relationships and elevating the quality of events where they are currently suffering.

Q3: Programs and Projects

Question: How do you plan to use Conferences and other major projects like Exemplar or this year’s Review Competition to support and grow your region?

I honestly have not thought about conferences in a long time.  Many of the judges that I have worked on conferences with in the past have seemingly stepped back from the program and there seems to be too few people in my area to justify a conference.  If enough interest was shown to build a conference in the Omaha, KC, Des Moines, or Sioux Falls area, I would be happy to start planning conferences again.  I would also be happy to help plan and spread the word of a conference in Minnesota or North Dakota, even if I could not attend those personally.  I feel that conferences are one of the most valuable learning and networking tools we have and have been a great help to me in my judging career.