JAY MAZON

For the past ten years Jay Mazon had organized and then directed "Solutions", a community based organization in her home town of Knoxville TN. She has helped lead campaigns that affect poor and working families because she grew up poor and recalls many challenges and injustices facing poor families.

Because of Jay's work tenants have a voice in Knoxville housing policy and have halted demolition of some of Knoxville public housing. In addition, policies have been put in place to be more inclusive of families who have been displaced in decision making.

Jay has also helped prevent state cuts to low income childcare programs, and helped put more funding into early childhood development. With other organizations like Stand for Children, she helped pass the Pre-K act of 2005. Jay organized a statewide childcare providers association so that providers would have a unified voice representing themselves and the low income families they serve in state childcare policy.

Jay has helped build awareness about the impacts of the dismantling of welfare reform on the national level by representing Tennessee with groups like Center for Community Change and the National Welfare Engine, together helping the keep rights of poor families on the national agenda.

Jay has served on the boards of several community organizations including Tennesseans for Fair Taxation, and she is currently the Co-Chair of the Appalachian Community Fund.

Jay accounts who she has become to her family. "My story doesn't really begin with me; it begins with the people that have helped shape me. My grandmother Callie Nolan has been incredibly active in our community while raising 13 children and now has more than 30 grandchildren and great grandchildren. Even today she is active in her Church.?? She really helped shape me. She is always the first to help others even when she is in need of help herself, and takes care of the whole community like they are her children. Everybody in the community calls her "mama" or "grandmamma". She is a natural leader, and has represented the community as?? the former president of Walter P Taylor Public Housing development of which our family was one of the first to move in."

Her parents are a major influence in her life well. "My dad always worked 2-3 low wage jobs at a time just so my mom and the four of us could be taken care of. He was a janitor in Knox County schools, but I never knew I was poor. I didn't even realize we were poor until I was grown. " Valuing and respecting the worth and dignity of people like my father, my grandmother, and other leaders within my family is why I do this work. When you see me at my best I hope you see a reflection of people like my father and grandmother."

After dropping out of high school, Jay has not only achieved her GED, but by working her way through college she now holds degrees both in Music and Voice as well as in Business and Organizational Management. ??She is currently perusing her MBA.

Jay is a mother of two; a twenty two month old boy, and six year old girl. Her father currently lives in Nashville.

In her free time, Jay can be caught writing and recording music in her home studio or singing at any number of open Mic's. Jay dreams of ghost writing songs for performing artists. She looks forward to putting roots down in Nashville, and empowering it's poor and homeless.