SanDonna Jones

SanDonna Jones is the Executive Director of the Unified Vailsburg Services Organization (UVSO) – a multi-service community development corporation in Newark, New Jersey that provides: early childhood education, after-school programming, affordable housing management, and neighborhood planning. In this role, she blends her 28+ years of experience in: organizational development, resource development, strategic planning, board administration, partnership-building, human resources, complex non-profit budgeting, and overall operations.

She is the former Executive Director of Administration and Development for YouthBuild Newark (known as the Newark Opportunity Youth Network). Her tenure there allowed her the opportunity to help grow the agency – at one point a $10 million multi-city technical assistance provider – to having launched the State’s first alternative charter high school. 

Having attended Yale University undergrad, SanDonna honed her skills at the Columbia School of Business’ Institute for Non-Profit Management and learned more about development at the Harvard Institute on Affordable Housing. Previous professional roles include: principal of SBJ Consulting; Entrepreneurial Training Institute (ETI) Facilitator for the New Jersey Economic Development Authority (NJEDA) wherein, through the Seton Hall University Institute on Work, she mentored non-profit students as they developed business plans for revenue-generating enterprises; Coordinator of the Newark Community Development Network (NCDN) – a coalition of several community development corporations; and work with the Regional Plan Association (New Jersey Office) – an urban and transportation planning firm.

A 1998 Leadership New Jersey fellow, she currently serves on the advisory board of the Seton Hall University Stillman School of Business, Transformative Leadership in Disruptive Times Certificate Program. Previous recognition of her work includes City News Publishing Company’s 1999 “100 Most Influential” in the State of New Jersey and having been acknowledged in the Minority Business Journal’s March 2000 issue, “New Jersey’s Black Women Powerbroker.”

She was the primary author of the “Neighborhoods” section of the City of Newark’s Comprehensive Economic Development Strategy (formerly the Overall Economic Development Program) (reports published 1997, 2001, 2006). She also assisted inthe community outreach and participation process of the City of Newark’s master planning process – specifically the revision of the land use component (as part of the Master Plan Working Group) and beginning the revision of the overall zoning ordinance (1997 – 2001).

She is married with three (3) children.