Bio: Juanita R. Jones is a visionary and impassioned senior executive and experienced project leader with outstanding operations management, communications, strategic planning and analytical skills, bringing just over 20 years of talent and expertise. She is a highly regarded professional project executive, extensively experienced in artfully cultivating consensus and relationship development among multiple partners across industries and disciplines, including community development organizations, government and quasi-government agencies, private sector firms and local citizenry in urban redevelopment. On September 16, 2011, Ms. Jones was appointed the Assistant Director of Operations for the Detroit Land Bank Authority. In this role Ms. Jones is responsible for the technical and managerial operations of the real estate development, construction administration, project design, and sales and marketing aspects of the organization’s efforts. Ms. Jones will also provide operational leadership of the newly formed Detroit Land Bank Community Development Corporation. She is currently managing a combined $22MM NSP1, 2 & 3 program fund, bringing a blend of unique community redevelopment strategies to shape distressed neighborhoods battered by the foreclosure crisis. In 2010, Ms. Jones joined the Center for Community Progress/Capital Access venture as the Detroit NSP2 Program Administrator. She served the Detroit Planning and Development Department and the Detroit Land Bank Authority in leading the effort on program design, management and implementation for Detroit’s $45MM allocation in NSP2 funding from MSHDA. She plays a pivotal role for the program in providing direction and oversight of what will be a national model for historic property preservation in urban neighborhoods through strategic acquisition, rehab and redevelopment strategies, communityindustry stakeholder partnership and alliance building, construction and grant administration, and program marketing. In this role Ms. Jones has cultivated an impressive collaboration with historic preservation and energy efficiency partners/collaborators such as the Michigan State Historic Preservation Office, National Advisory Council on Historic Preservation, Michigan Historic Preservation Network, National Trust for Historic Preservation, Preservation Wayne, City of Detroit Historic District Commission, Warm Training and Walker-Miller Energy Services. Before joining Center for Community Progress, Ms. Jones served as a HUD Technical Assistant (HUD TA) in 2010 on NSP1 for the City of Detroit through Dennison Associates, Inc., a national HUD TA, where she led the effort to successfully obligate $16MM in NSP1 funds for a demolition program that is unprecedented in scope for the City. Her role also included providing professional project management services to Executive Office level staff in re-engineering and process improvement for the City’s demolition process, development of a Policy and Procedures Manual for the division, creating a professional Project Charter, and assisting with the scoping and hiring of a demolition project manager to implement Mayor Dave Bing’s 2010-2013 residential demolition project. Prior to the Detroit assignments, Ms. Jones was in private practice from 2002, founding JRJ Consulting, LLC, project management consulting firm based in Detroit, specializing in urban real estate development. While in private practice Ms. Jones held contracts with notable developers, Phoenix Development Group, where she provided pre-development consulting on the $50MM Whittier Park & Hotel Redevelopment project; one of the most complex financially sourced projects in Detroit, located in an historic hotel on the Detroit waterfront. Other contracts include Lutheran Child and Family Services of Michigan’s Oakman Place Apartments in Detroit, a $5MM project, the New Far Eastside Development Corporation for pre-development planning on the $100MM development project effort, AAB Development Strategies for New Market Tax Credit program assistance on a $60MM allocation. Since 2002, Ms. Jones has been assigned as an expert assistant to the plaintiffs’ counsel by a federal judge, Judge Damon J. Keith of the Sixth Circuit Appellate Court, who is the sitting judge for an historic racial discrimination case, Garrett v. Hamtramck et al for which he was the original trial judge, and continues to preside over today overseeing the implementation of the $40MM 200-unit affordable housing settlement in the case.
Education: Ms. Jones received undergraduate and graduate degrees from the University of Michigan in Sociology and Human Resources Management, and earned her Masters of Social Work degree including studies in Urban Planning and Social/Community Planning. She continues her professional development and holds certifications in a number of fields, including the prestigious Project Management Institute’s Certified Project Management Professional (PMP), and the U.S. Green Building Council’s LEED AP, BD+C and HOMES credentials, and the Housing Development Finance Professional Certification from the National Development Council. She also holds State of Michigan licenses as a Michigan Residential Builder, Real Estate Salesperson, Lead Supervisor and Certified Renovator. As a hobby and in her spare time, she has also completed a Graphic Design Masters Certification with the Sessions College for Professional Design of New York.
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