Candice C. Jones

President and CEO, Public Welfare Foundation

Candice C. Jones joined Public Welfare Foundation, a private national foundation with headquarters in Washington, DC, as its President and Chief Executive Officer in 2017. Public Welfare Foundation has supported efforts to advance justice and opportunity for people in need for over seventy years.

Prior to joining the Foundation, Jones served as a Senior Advisor to former United States Secretary of Education Arne Duncan at Chicago CRED. The organization focuses on gun violence and establishing a continuum of care for young adults at highest risk of gun violence involvement in the city of Chicago.

In 2014, Jones was appointed Director of the Illinois Department of Juvenile Justice (IDJJ) to lead critical reforms to the state’s juvenile justice landscape—making communities safer by fostering better life outcomes for youth in custody.

Ms. Jones’ career has been dedicated to public service, centering on transforming systems and applying the principle of adolescent development to system’s change. In 2012, she was named a White House Fellow, where she focused on developing a strategy for improving correctional education and reentry services for incarcerated youth and adults.

In addition, Ms. Jones drove juvenile justice strategy nationally as a Program Officer at the MacArthur Foundation through their system’s change initiative Models for Change.

Jones provides technical assistance to state system actors on issues related to the application of adolescent development to correctional settings. Notably, she contributed to the design of the Vera Institute of Justice Restoring Promise project, which applies the best practice in juvenile justice to specialized units for young adults in adult correctional settings.

Hear from Candice in Session 3: The possibility and fragility of reform here.