Shawntae Jones was born and raised in Kansas City, Missouri. She went to the Paseo Academy of Fine and Performing Arts for creative writing. Now, she’s serving as the first director of talent and inclusion at Kansas City Art Institute.
She began her role on Aug. 31, in the thick of a pandemic and a national reckoning with racism after Black Lives Matter protests this summer.
Her role is to launch a “coordinated effort to look at how we can do better,” consolidating the diversity initiatives coming out of individual departments into a unified vision, said Kansas City Art Institute’s Nerman Family President Tony Jones. She “directs the traffic” and will lead the institution in “recruiting great staff and keeping great staff.”
Only a month on the job, she’s “commanding the confidence” of her colleagues, he added.
Jones earned her master’s degree in human resource management from Webster University and her bachelor’s degree in psychology from the University of Missouri-Kansas City. She previously worked for Hallmark Cards for six years, serving on the Hallmark African American Leadership Council for two years as professional development chair.
For Jones, there’s something special about working at the intersection of diversity and the arts in her own hometown.
“I am a minority woman,” she said. “I grew up in this Black community … I went to an arts school here in Kansas City. I feel like now is my opportunity to pave the way for other young adults who look just like me. They’re growing up in the community that I grew up in and that I still live in.”
