Featured Blogger: MONIQUE JONES

Monique L. Jones is a mother, sister, daughter, teacher, and advocate for women and youth, aspiring writer and public intellectual. Monique earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in Political Science and African American Studies from Pepperdine University in Malibu, CA and a Master of Divinity degree with a concentration in Theology and Women's Studies from Princeton Theological Seminary in Princeton, NJ. Her studies have afforded her the opportunity to travel internationally to Peru, Chile, Mexico, Brazil, Uruguay, India, Cuba, Argentina.  She is currently an M.S.W. degree candidate at the Graduate School of Social Work at Rutgers University where her focus is on clinical social work and social policy, with hopes of working in black communities both domestically and globally.  Her broader interests include the intersection of pastoral counseling, womanist theory and spiritual autobiographical writing as a means of both worship and healing.

Monique's prior professional and community service experience includes over four years in immigration law at Fragomen, Del Rey, Bernsen & Lowey, LLP, interning with the United States Senate Health, Education, Labor &Pension Committee, and Sunda School Union in Tamil Nadu, India, volunteering with Camp Kilpatrick, a male juvenile detention camp, and PepReach, a college-prep mentoring program for inner city high school students in Los Angeles county; and church pianist at Bethany Missionary Baptist Church in Oceanside, CA. 

Since October 2012 Monique has served as the Program Coordinator for the Princeton YMCA's Y Scholars program, an extracurricular educational and team mentoring program which supports minority youth in the 5th - 12th grades.  She is currently a Youth Minister at Union Baptist Church in Trenton, NJ and a Social Worker Intern at Princeton High School where she was awarded a Princeton Education Foundation teacher mini-grant for curriculum she developed for an afterschool girls group.

Monique is Blessed Chix's newest contributor and she is already making a meaningful impact. Like us on Facebook to keep up with what she is doing in her ministries and read her blog posts here: 

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