Founder / CEO
Betony Jones is an executive leader and policy strategist who designs the rules, institutions, and incentives that determine how public investment actually operates in the economy. Her work focuses on aligning public dollars, governance structures, and labor and community power to produce durable economic outcomes—especially in politically contested and legally constrained environments where ambition alone falls short.
Betony served in the Biden–Harris Administration as Senior Labor Advisor to the Secretary of Energy and as Director of the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Energy Jobs. In these roles, she co-chaired an agency-wide initiative to advance equity, labor, and economic prosperity in energy projects and designed the Department’s Community Benefits Plan framework, leading its integration across DOE and establishing a new governance model for federal clean energy investment. She led the intellectual and political work of embedding workforce practices, labor standards, and community and labor agreements into DOE’s core investment strategy under the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and Inflation Reduction Act.
Her leadership moved community and worker benefits from rhetoric to rulemaking—turning them into enforceable expectations tied to public dollars. This work reshaped federal climate investment into an instrument of industrial policy, influencing how agencies, developers, labor, and communities negotiate risk, accountability, and outcomes in the clean energy transition.
Betony also designed and directed the Administration’s energy jobs portfolio, setting DOE’s approach to workforce development, labor engagement, job quality, and social responsibility across historic federal investments. She launched and led the Battery Workforce Initiative, a national effort to support the growth and competitiveness of the U.S. battery industry by aligning labor standards, workforce systems, manufacturers, and education partners with domestic manufacturing and supply-chain strategy. She also oversaw the Department’s energy employment research, including the U.S. Energy and Employment Report.
Before federal service, Betony founded Inclusive Economics, advising governments, labor organizations, philanthropies, and mission-driven institutions on economic development, workforce strategy, and institutional design. She previously held senior leadership roles at the UC Berkeley Labor Center and the Sierra Business Council, where she developed innovative programs and frameworks that informed policy and practice across sectors.
Betony brings systems thinking, political judgment, and decisive execution to efforts that seek not just to move money—but to shape who benefits, who decides, and what lasts. She has a bachelors of science in botany and pre-med from the University of Michigan, and a masters degree in social ecology from the Yale University, School of Forestry and Environmental Studies.
She abhors banana flavoring and the abuse of power — one more than the other. She loves ideas, cooking, washing dishes, nature, wit and good humor.
