Donna M. Jackson is a native of Kansas City, Missouri who currently lives in Hackensack, New Jersey.  Throughout her career, she has served hundreds of our most vulnerable citizens who were facing challenges and seeking a better life.  ​

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She obtain her B.A. in Sociology at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, where she interned at the Alta Vista Charter School.  This pairing resulted in the 2011 completion of "Career Choices and College Life", a college readiness handbook, that she published in English and Spanish to help under-represented students navigate the college application process.

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In 2017, she completed her M.A. in Sociology at the Colin Powell School for Civic and Global Leadership, City College of New York-CUNY.  There, she conducted a research internship at the Dyckman Senior Center.  She was selected to present her findings, "Serving Seniors: Developing Organizational Leverage at a Senior Center", at the 85th Annual Meeting of the Eastern Sociological Society in February of 2015.

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In recent years, she has worked on two research teams evaluating programs that hope to give students an educational advantage and families better living conditions: Education Through Music and NYC Department of Housing Preservation and Development-Housing and Neighborhood Study (HANS).  In 2020, she published the book "Race, Poverty & Progress: An American Paradox" which explores both the limiting and liberating aspects of the socialization of Black people in America.

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Donna is trained in Applied Behavioral Analysis (ABA), certified to conduct behavioral/social research, holds a New Jersey Department of Education, Teacher of Social Studies certification, teaches middle school social studies, and is currently enrolled in the Rutgers Graduate School of Education.  Donna is a wife, a mother of three, a step-mother of two, and grandmother who enjoys sewing, video production, drawing, fashion design, collecting vintage clothing, and taking care of her "plant babies" in her spare time.

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