Sandra Jones

    Sandra Jones is currently the Senior Program Collaboration Manager at Metropolitan Family Service (MFS), which is a non-profit culturally responsive organization located in the Portland, Oregon area. Her current role is focusing on partnerships, in an effort to service our communities in the most efficient and productive methods. She has been working with historically underserved and rapidly changing demographic school districts and neighborhoods, for approximately 15 years.

Sandra grew up in Hong Kong and Hawaii and received her Bachelor’s degree in Business Economics at Willamette University in Salem, Oregon. She began her career in the financial field, but soon realized that serving the community and focusing on education were overpowering passions. She began volunteering in the schools, primarily in the Gresham-Barlow School District, as a dyslexia tutor, became a Title I instructor and worked in the front office as well.

She currently oversees the Albina-Rockwood Promise Neighborhood Initiative, in the Reynolds School District and the Successful Families Initiative, in the David Douglas School District.Through these initiatives, she has partnered with other organizations in creating programs which support and guide students and families to achieve academic and personal success. She has also been involved in the Schools Uniting Neighborhoods (SUN) program, partnering with school districts and Multnomah County, in creating after school programs from the ground up and providing resources, in full-service Community Schools.

As the project manager for her companies newest grant with the Portland Clean Energy Fund, she is continuing to work in climate equity, climate justice and climate resilience, and understanding how that affects our most marginalized communities.

Internally at MFS, she is part of the Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Justice Committee, where she focuses on ensuring an inclusive environment for staff. As part of the agency’s Leadership Committee, she is continually aware of the strategic thinking and the need for inclusive community services.

She is also part of the Student Engagement and Leadership team at All Hands Raised, another local non-profit organization, where they bring educators together to empower students and to champion racial educational equity. Most recently, she was honored to be part of the panel on “Implementing Trauma-Informed Responses, Services and Practices in Schools” for the 2022 Promise Neighborhoods and Full-Service Community Schools National Network Conference, in partnership with the U.S. Department of Education.

Outside of work, she is a proud mom to a 22 and 23 year old. She loves to create dishes in the kitchen, work in her garden, knit, paint, play the piano and listen to all kinds of music and explore new neighborhoods and foods! And there’s always a special place in her heart for animals.