Albert Beckford Jones, to serve as Special Advisor to the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) Research Competitiveness Program (RCP) AAAS is the World’s Largest General Scientific Society—Publisher of the Science Family of Journals

01 January 2018

Albert Beckford Jones, Chair Emeritus of the national Public Policy International Affairs Program (PPIA) and President and CEO Trading & Consulting International, Inc. (a Chicago based international business development, strategy implementation and management consulting company) has agreed to serve as a Special Advisor to the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) Research Competitiveness Program (RCP). AAAS is the World’s Largest General Scientific Society—Publisher of the Science Family of Journals. Mr. Jones will assist senior management in RCP and other programs in business development efforts with foreign governments, and institutions of science, technology, engineering, mathematics (STEM), research, innovation, and entrepreneurship in the Gulf region; lay the ground work for international programmatic work and S&T collaboration. As one of the world’s most respected independent, non-profit, non-partisan organizations in science, AAAS’s mission seeks to “advance science, engineering, and innovation throughout the world for the benefit of all people.”

Albert Beckford Jones

Albert Jones has served as an advisor and interlocutor to a variety of U.S. domestic and international organizations doing business with foreign entities. Dr. Charles Dunlap, Director of RCP, said of Mr. Jones’ Special Advisory role “he brings an extensive working knowledge and cultural understanding to STEM and innovation capacity building in the MENA region”.

In 2008, Albert Jones was the former Senior Advisor to the President and Board of the U.S. Civilian Research Development Foundation (CRDF Global)- a nonprofit foundation established in 1995 by the National Science Foundation, authorized by the U.S. Congress and active in over 30 countries.  At CRDF Global, Mr. Jones led CRDF’s international strategy and business development initiatives with foreign governments and STEM institutions to promote safety, security, and sustainability through cross-border programs and S&T partnerships.  In 2011-2012, Mr. Jones was appointed the Manager of Business Development at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST), a multi-billion-dollar endowed, science and research university in Saudi Arabia.

Over the course of three decades of Albert Jones’ career, he has served as an executive, entrepreneur, and advisor in a variety of industries.  From 2006-2007, he was the Chief Financial Officer (CFO) and Executive Director of General Motors’ (GM) largest operations in the Middle East (Aljomaih/AAC); Albert Jones was the senior vice president of corporate strategy for Key Banking Corp.; corporate planning officer for the executive management and vice chairman of First Chicago – now J.P. Morgan Chase; a licensed global financial advisor in Merrill Lynch’s Private Client Group. In the oil industry, he was a special business analyst for the executive management of British Petroleum (BP).  As an entrepreneur and executive consultant, Albert Jones has start-up leadership. He served as an advisor to senior management on international strategy and new business and programmatic opportunities in higher education, aerospace, investment banking, international (diversified) family owned conglomerates, and small & medium enterprises (SMEs) sectors, including STEM, innovations, and entrepreneurship organizations.

Albert Jones, 60, holds two masters’ degrees: the first master’s degrees in Economics focused on international economic development (from University of Wisconsin Milwaukee), where he, earned a bachelor’s degree, also, in Economics. He earned his second master’s degree in Public Policy Analysis and Management (from University of Chicago), as an Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Fellow; he studied at the Harvard Kennedy School under fellowship funding from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.

Mr. Jones has been invited to speak at various international forums about economic growth in emerging markets as a form to reduce poverty. Mr. Jones said, “I am deeply honored to provide advisory services to the premier organization in the world that is devoted to advance cooperation among scientists, safeguard scientific freedom, encourage scientific responsibility, strengthen scientific education, and extend science reach to people who would otherwise not have access to the benefits it provides for all humanity”.  Albert Jones and his wife, a retired professor of 19th century American and British literature, have one daughter.

AAAS

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The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) is the world’s largest general scientific society and publisher of the journal Science (www.sciencemag.org) as well as Science Translational Medicine (www.sciencetranslationalmedicine.org) and Science Signaling ( www.sciencesignaling.org). AAAS was founded in 1848 and includes some 264 affiliated societies and academies of science, serving 10 million individuals. Science has the largest paid circulation of any peer-reviewed general science journal in the world, with an estimated total readership of 1 million per week. AAAS has individual members in more than 91 countries around the globe. The non-profit AAAS (www.aaas.org) is open to all and fulfills its mission to “advance science and serve society” through initiatives in science policy, international programs, science education, public engagement, and more (for  information on AAAS,  visit its website: www.aaas.org).