Dr. Mautra Staley Jones has spent her whole career working with students who “check the boxes” of barriers that often disadvantage students in their pursuit of higher education.
Dr. Mautra Staley Jones
As a student at Oklahoma University, Jones majored in journalism, hoping to be an on-air broadcaster. However, she ended up working in the nonprofit and education sectors. She found she had a knack for organizational development and fundraising — skills that have proved critical at every stop of her career. She soon took a job as director of development and marketing at KIPP Reach College Preparatory Academy, a charter school in Oklahoma City that serves a population where 82% of the students are Black and 83% qualify for the federal free or reduced lunch program, an indicator of poverty.
“When I tell you being able to be fully immersed and make a difference” changed her whole career trajectory, says Jones, “I found my passion.”
In a lot of ways, Jones sees herself in her students — from the students at KIPP to the residents at White Fields, a live-in facility and school that takes a restorative approach to helping students who have faced trauma where Jones served as director of development from 2012 to 2015, to the students at Langston University, Oklahoma’s only historically Black institution where Jones most recently served as vice president for advancement and executive director of the university’s foundation. At Langston, 92% of students qualify for the federal Pell grant program and 70% are first-generation.
“I grew up similar to the students that I serve,” says Jones, who explains that she grew up in poverty, survived childhood abuse, faced food insecurity and was placed in the foster care system until her grandmother stepped in to help raise her and her siblings. “The things that I’ve gone through have really shaped me and placed this desire in me to help others on their journey through life.”
Jones says she’s thankful for the teachers, counselors, and others who knew her story and helped her to realize her potential.
“Education is the great equalizer. It just is. Education has opened up so many doors. It’s been the gateway for me, because had I not been brave — there were so many things that I didn’t see carried out at home,” she says. “As a child, you don’t understand your circumstances, you don’t understand why things are the way they are.”
