Jon first met the San Quentin News team as part of a social sector-focused experiential learning course during his Berkeley-Haas MBA program. He led the team of fellow students that developed a business plan to ensure the long-term sustainability of the newspaper and to achieve the SQ News staff’s big hairy audacious goal of providing free access to every prisoner in the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.
Jon completed his MBA in May 2015, including coursework in effective non-profit board governance. He stayed on as a business advisor to the SQ News and has remained active and committed since the end of that first engagement with them. In early 2016, Jon founded and became Director of the Friends of San Quentin News, an independent project under the 501c3 fiscal sponsorship of Social Good Fund. The Friends of San Quentin News is now the affiliated non-profit fundraising and business facilitation entity for SQ News and supports its circulation and social impact growth plan.
Jon holds an engineering degree from MIT and spent 11 years in the US Navy, serving the last 6 in Washington DC for the headquarters of the Navy’s nuclear propulsion program. He has lived in 13 states across the country and currently resides in Portland, Oregon with his wife and two sons, where he works as a business and innovation manager for a high-tech company. Jon commutes to San Quentin periodically to work, catch up, and laugh with the SQ News team.
https://sanquentinnews.com/the-100th-edition-san-quentin-news/