Jennifer Jones Austin

CEO and Executive Director, FPWA
Photo of Jennifer Jones Austin

Jennifer Jones Austin CEO and Executive Director of FPWA, an anti-poverty, policy, and advocacy organization with 170 member agencies and faith partners. Jones Austin has led and secured monumental changes in social policy to strengthen and empower the disenfranchised and marginalized, bringing to her work a profound understanding of links between race, poverty, law, and social policy in America, and the role religion plays.

She is currently the Visiting Scholar at the NYU Silver School of Social Work and the Scholar in Residence at Alliance University Center for Racial Reconciliation. She previously served as lead advisor for Full Day Universal Pre-K expansion, and the 2020-2021 NYPD Reform and Reinvention Collaborative.

Jones Austin earned a law degree from the Fordham University School of Law, a Master of Science in Management and Policy from the NYU Robert F. Wagner School of Public Service, and a Bachelor of Science from Rutgers University.

More about the 2023 McSilver Awards