Jennifer Jones Austin

(She/Her/Hers)

CEO & Executive Director – FPWA

A fourth-generation leader of faith and social justice, Jennifer Jones Austin fights for equity. As CEO and Executive Director of FPWA, an anti-poverty, policy and advocacy organization with 170 member agencies and faith partners, she has led and secured monumental changes in social policy to strengthen and empower the disenfranchised and marginalized. Jennifer brings to her work a profound understanding of the link between race, poverty, law and social policy in America, and the role religion plays. Ms. Jones Austin is also a radio host; public speaker; author of Consider It Pure Joy; and editor of God in the Ghetto: A Prophetic Word Revisited. She has chaired several influential boards and commissions, including the NYC Racial Justice Commission, the first of its kind in the nation. She is the Vice Chair of the Board of National Action Network; a founding member of the NYS 400 Years of African-American History Commission; a Fordham University Feerick Center for Social Justice Advisory Board member; a member of the Center for Law, Brain and Behavior Advisory Board at Harvard University; and a COVID-19 "Roll Up Your Sleeves" Task Force member. She is the Visiting Scholar at the New York University Silver School of Social Work and the Scholar in Residence at Alliance University's Center for Racial Reconciliation (CRR). Ms. Jones Austin also chaired the NYC Board of Correction and presided over the rule making process to end solitary confinement in New York City jails. She was co-chair of the Mayoral Transition for Bill de Blasio, and lead advisor for Full Day UPK expansion in 2014-2015 and the 2020-2021 NYPD Reform and Reinvention Collaborative.

Jennifer Jones Austin earned a juris doctor degree from the Fordham University School of Law, a Master of Science in Management and Policy from the New York University Robert F. Wagner School of Public Service, and a Bachelor of Science from Rutgers University.