Writing this post so anybody who experiences this in the future can avoid the stress!
JO Programs Participants can stall or get stuck in the ‘New’ state for a period of time (usually minutes but sometimes hours if a large number of participants) due to Gainsight backend queuing delays. This has only happened to me once in past year of JO Program management where I’ve sent out hundreds of programs so it is rare.
Details into Participant States here: https://support.gainsight.com/Gainsight_NXT/Journey_Orchestrator_and_Email_Templates/Programs/Program%3A_Participant_Activity_Feed
Thanks to