Candice Jones ’07 and Jason Washington ’07 are among the 15 White House Fellows selected for the elite fellowship program’s 2012-13 class. Lyndon Johnson created the program in 1964 to allow promising public service leaders “first-hand, high-level experience with the workings of federal government, and to increase their sense of participation in national affairs.” Typically, as many as 1,000 applicants vie for fellowships each year.
Jones, the executive director of the Illinois Juvenile Justice Commission, where she manages the distribution of Federal Title II block grant funds, will be a White House Fellow within the Department of Education. She previously worked as a juvenile justice program officer at the MacArthur Foundation, overseeing a grant portfolio of more than $40 million with the goal of mitigating racial and ethnic disparities and improving juvenile indigent defense. Jones was also an associate focusing on complex commercial litigation at Barack Ferrazzano Kirschbaum & Nagelberg in Chicago, where her pro bono work included piloting a restorative justice program at a local high school that served pregnant teens and young mothers. She graduated as a Petrie Scholar with a Dean’s Scholarship from NYU Law, where she chaired the Battered Women’s Project and served on the Black Allied Law Students Association’s executive board. She also defended both youth and adults with the Legal Aid Society’s Juvenile Rights Division and Neighborhood Defender Services of Harlem while a student in the Juvenile Defender Clinic and the Community Defender Reentry Clinic. Prior to matriculating at the Law School, Jones worked as a legal advocate for rape survivors in Chicago and an English instructor in Japan. She graduated from Washington University in St. Louis with a B.A. in both African and African American studies and political science.
Washington, a senior policy advisor to Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake of Baltimore, will work in the Department of Housing and Urban Development as a White House Fellow. In the mayor’s office he focuses on education, finance, and economic development and chairs the School Construction Taskforce. In 2010 he directed the Maryland Democratic Party’s get-out-the-vote campaign in Baltimore and served as deputy campaign manager for Maryland State Senator Bill Ferguson. Washington was previously a corporate associate at Kirkland & Ellis in New York. At NYU Law he was an AnBryce Scholar, a staff editor of the NYU Review of Law and Social Change, and a recipient of both the Malcolm X Leadership Award and the Vanderbilt Medal. He serves as chair of the AnBryce Foundation Advisory Council and treasurer of the Law School’s Black, Latino, Asian Pacific American Law Alumni Association. Before coming to the Law School, Washington taught seventh-grade science in Houston as part of Teach for America, and subsequently served as the organization’s alumni director in the Los Angeles region. He earned a master’s degree in education from the University of St. Thomas in Houston, and a bachelor’s in biology from Morehouse College.
Fellows work full-time for a year with top-ranking government officials, and take part in roundtable discussions with prominent private- and public-sector leaders. They also go on domestic and international excursions to study government policy in action. Alumni of the program include Colin Powell, former secretary of state; Wesley Clark, the former presidential candidate and retired U.S. Army general; Elaine Chao, former secretary of labor; Kansas Governor Sam Brownback; and neurosurgeon Sanjay Gupta, CNN’s chief medical correspondent.
Posted on September 5, 2012