Deputy Director

Meet the Deputy Director

Mary N. Whigham Jones
Deputy Director
Departmental Office of Civil Rights
Office of the Secretary
U. S. Department of Transportation
Washington, DC

Under the executive direction of the Director, DOCR, the Deputy Director serves as primary advisor to the Director on civil rights policy, program, and operational matters; provides leadership and direction to division chiefs and other DOT civil rights staff in carrying out their responsibilities and acts for the Director in his absence. The Deputy Director also supervises the Departmental Office of Civil Rights Administrative Officer and staff.

Since January 1999, as Deputy Director, Departmental Office of Civil Rights, Ms. Jones provides senior leadership and support to the Secretary of Transportation on Department of Transportation (DOT) civil rights programs. She provides policy guidance and oversight to the several operating administrations, of which DOT is comprised, on programs related to Disadvantaged Business Enterprise, Title VI and VII of the Civil Rights Act, Rehabilitation Act, Americans with Disabilities Act, Age Discrimination Act, Executive Order on Environmental Justice, the White House Initiative on Minority Serving Institutions, and others.

Previously, Ms. Jones served as the Deputy Assistant Administrator for Civil Rights at the Federal Aviation Administration’s (FAA) Office of Civil Rights, having joined that office in April 1996. There she provided leadership, policy direction, and technical assistance related to internal and external civil rights programs, and the agency’s effort to create and maintain a model work environment for a diverse workforce of approximately 48,000.

Ms. Jones’ Federal career began with the FAA Office of Chief Counsel in 1979. While in that office she served in several capacities. As an attorney advisor in the Enforcement & Regulations Division, she had responsibility for numerous rulemaking projects involving airmen and airports, advisory circulars, interpretations of Federal Aviation Regulations (FAR’s), and handled FAR enforcement actions against airmen before the National Transportation Safety Board. Beginning in 1982, she served as a legal advisor/trial attorney, and later Manager, Personnel & Labor Law Branch where she was responsible for employment law litigation before the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the Merit System Protection Board, the various Federal district courts, as well as appellate litigation before the U. S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. From 1993 to 1996, Ms. Jones regularly served as Acting Assistant Chief Counsel, General Legal Services Division with legal program responsibility for employment law, government ethics, FOIA, and Privacy Act matters.

Ms. Jones received her Juris Doctor degree from Temple University School of Law and her undergraduate degree in Political Science from Tuskegee Institute (now Tuskegee University). She completed Executive Programs at the Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University. She is a member of the Pennsylvania and District of Columbia bars, and admitted before the U. S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia. Ms. Jones is a native of Alabama and resides with her family in Fairfax Station, Virginia.