David R. Jones worked on corporate antitrust and contract disputes at Cravath, Swaine & Moore before moving into New York City government. From 1979 to 1983, he served as special adviser to Mayor Edward Koch, with responsibilities that included race relations, urban development, immigration reform and education. He then led the city's Youth Bureau from 1983 to 1986.
In 1986, Jones began leading the Community Service Society of New York, a nonpartisan research and advocacy organization that works to expand economic opportunity and full civic participation for low-income New Yorkers. He has led the organization ever since. He writes "The Urban Agenda," a biweekly column on issues affecting poor and minority communities, in the New York Amsterdam News, and a parallel column in the Spanish-language newspaper El Diario/La Prensa. In 2016, the state Senate confirmed him to a city seat on the Metropolitan Transportation Authority board, where his committee work has included New York City Transit and MTA Bus, Finance, the Capital Program and Audit.
Jones was born in Brooklyn's Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood. While studying at Wesleyan, he interned for Senator Robert F. Kennedy in Washington. After earning his law degree at Yale in 1974, he clerked for federal judge Constance Baker Motley, the first Black woman to serve on the federal bench.
His civic work has included finance and health institutions as well as advocacy. From 1996 to 2000, he chaired the board of Carver Federal Savings Bank, the largest African American-managed bank in the country, and he served twelve years as a trustee of Wesleyan University, later as a trustee emeritus. He has served on the board of the New York City Health and Hospitals Corporation and as vice chairman of the Primary Care Development Corporation, which finances health-care programs and facilities in medically underserved communities. He has chaired the board of the Nation Institute, served on the Moreland Commission and sat on transition committees for New York City mayors and state officials.
