CEO, Inclusive Economics
After graduating from the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, a brief winter stay in Truckee in 2004 sparked Betony Jones’s lifelong passion for rural social, economic, and environmental sustainability—and a deep, enduring commitment to the Sierra Business Council (SBC). Recognizing SBC as a uniquely visionary model, she joined the organization as Manager of the Sustainable Forestry Program, later becoming Director and then Vice President of Program Development. During her tenure, she launched initiatives such as the Sierra Nevada Geotourism project, Sierra Nevada Energy Watch, and the Sierra Nevada Local First program, while pioneering SBC’s transition to fee-for-service revenue generation.
Betony left SBC in 2009 to focus on the intersection of climate change and labor policy, becoming one of the nation’s leading experts in the field. Her expertise led to her recruitment by the Biden Administration, where she served as Senior Advisor on Labor to the Secretary of Energy and Director of the Office of Energy Jobs. At the Department of Energy, she applied the entrepreneurial spirit and collaborative, implementation-oriented skills honed at SBC to craft the Community Benefits Plan framework. This groundbreaking approach conditioned hundreds of billions of dollars in grants and loans on recipients’ commitments to job quality and community engagement—becoming a national best practice for energy project development. At DOE, she also designed and implemented an $8 million place-based program to address workforce challenges in the clean energy sector, a $5 million initiative to develop industry-recognized apprenticeships in battery manufacturing, and a $10 million effort to streamline labor compliance and track job creation on federally funded energy projects.
Betony is the Founder and CEO of Inclusive Economics, a consulting firm that brings rigorous research and bold, practical ideas to the toughest environmental and economic challenges. She is also a senior fellow at the Roosevelt Institute, a think tank advancing bold policy ideas that deliver for working families and rebalance power. She joined SBC’s Board of Directors in 2016.
