Meet the Founder.
Jenese Jones Oden
With over 20 years of servant leadership in the areas of education, policy, local government, financial services and community coalition building, Jenese Jones Oden is a leader whose diligence and impeccable work has made a lasting impact in the lives of many. A 5th generation Marylander with strong relationships across various sectors, she is dedicated to providing high quality, people centered results through consensus based leadership. She is a proud graduate of Clark Atlanta University with a major in Political Science and minor in Vocal Music Performance. She embodies the university mottos of “Culture for Service” and “I’ll find a way or make one” in every endeavor. After being accepted into Teach for America Saint Louis and abandoning her law school aspirations, she selflessly committed 12 years to serving our nation’s youth on the front lines as a transformative educator and a passionate teacher coach. The decision to participate in AmeriCorps at age 21 was a defining moment in Jenese’s life, ultimately changing her professional trajectory from leading in the courtroom to the classroom.
Her political and community commitments are strong throughout the state of Maryland and nationally. She was elected an ANC commissioner in our nation's capital in 2012, during which time she Co-founded the DC Education Coalition for Change with a group of former educators. In 2016, she turned her attention solely to education advocacy and organizing. She is a seasoned trainer with the National Democratic Training Committee, providing critical support to new candidates from across the country. She is also the former Vice Chair and current GOTV Chair of the Anne Arundel Democratic Central Committee and most recently served as a Regional Organizing Director for the Maryland Democratic Party coordinated campaign during the historic election of Maryland’s 1st African American Governor, Wes Moore.
Jenese’s passion to eradicate educational inequity has fueled her leadership roles over the last decade. She was the co-founder of Faith Leaders for Excellent Schools, an education advocacy organization in Baltimore, MD which focused on developing local clergy leaders to effectively advocate for state level policies impacting children of color. Prior to accepting this role, she served as Executive Director of MarylandCAN and was a Policy Advisor Fellow at the U.S. Department of Education (ED) under Secretary Arne Duncan. Her notable accomplishments at the Department of ED were designing the Inaugural Male Educators of Color Symposium, which birthed numerous state level groups to organize local initiatives for improving the number of black male teachers in our nation’s schools. She rounded out her work in non profit leadership most recently as Program Director of Reading Partners DC, supporting a dynamic team of leaders and AmeriCorps members who successfully provided high impact tutoring to 700+ emerging readers across DC Public and Charter Schools in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Jenese has been deeply engaged in financial education and has been on a crusade for the last decade as a licensed Financial Services professional. Through the areas of Income Protection, Wealth Accumulation and Debt Elimination, she has helped countless individuals and families secure their financial future. Seeing the need for venture capital in the African American community and minority owned businesses, she took a leap of faith to invest a portion of her life’s savings to open a national commercial lending brokerage, Rehoboth Commercial Capital and will expand the business in 2023 to larger markets.
Jenese has been called upon by countless leaders of nonprofits and government entities to lead professional development workshops. She is known for high impact, engaging learning experiences designed to inspire participants to take immediate next steps in the areas of effective team communication and organization growth and development.
Her commitment to service extends to leadership on various boards, including Leadership Anne Arundel, founding Board member of Capital Village Public Charter School and Director of Women’s Services for the House of Healing DMV Women’s ministry.She is pursuing her MBA in Finance from Louisiana State University Shreveport in 2024.
She is happily married to her best friend and forever love, William.
