Alan Jones is a Managing Director and Co‑Head of Private Equity at Morgan Stanley and an eleven-year member of All Souls who during those years, has contributed greatly to the church’s in‑house and outreach programs.

Alan grew up in Clark, New Jersey, a small town in Union county whose economy depended on the General Motors factory where his father worked as a machinist. At age five, Alan’’s mother passed away and his father took on both parental roles. His brother, who is thirteen years older, was already away at school. Alan speaks with affection and admiration of his dad. Smart and with great common sense, he encouraged Alan to work hard, study and to be well educated. Through the lean times when there were union strikes at the factory or other adversities, Alan said that he never felt disadvantaged but did acquire a deep sense of responsibility to help others less fortunate.

“Coming from a long line of Welsh coal miners who settled long ago in the United States in Scranton, Pennsylvania, where there was plenty of coal, I also learned the importance of community. My father enlisted in the army at age nineteen during World War II—certainly one of ‘The Greatest Generation’—where he learned discipline. When he worked the night shift, my mother’’s cousins or family friends and neighbors livinging nearby provided care for me.”

“So much in life depends on luck,” Alan said. “I learned that community acts as a safety net. In elementary school, a teacher, Mary Anne Walsh, became another role model and we remain good friends to this day.” In high school his primary academic interests were in science and math. In the first class, one term, a biology teacher read the role of students and when he came upon Alan’s name, said, “Oh, A.J.” He’s been known by that acronym ever since.

A.J. was certain that he would go to medical school. His father pointed out on several occasions that his brother had already become the lawyer in the family. Therefore, according to plan and expectation, Alan graduated Magna cum Laude in Biochemical Sciences from Harvard College and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa in 1983. Then, Mrs. Walsh entered the picture once again. Knowing that Alan’’s family lacked the funds to send him on to medical school without substantial earnings on his part, she offered Alan the opportunity to work as a summer intern for her husband who was an officer at First Boston. “I told her I had no experience in investment banking and in fact, was not totally sure what it involved. Mrs. Walsh assured me that I would have no problem. As an intern for two summers doing everything, mostly matters which others did not want to deal with, I learned a lot and became fascinated with the field. It opened a new world to me, intellectually challenging, and the prospect of doing business around the world was very appealing.” As a result, Alan changed career course and enrolled in Harvard Business School. He graduated in 1987 with High Distinction and was also a Baker Scholar.

At the Business School, he met his wife, Ashley Garrett, also from a small town in New Jersey where her father practiced veterinary medicine. They were in the same study group “section” at the Business School. “Sections” are a traditional mechanism at Harvard graduate schools that breaks a large class into more feasible units. Although coming from somewhat different backgrounds, A.J. and Ashley share a devotion to assisting educational organizations and reaching out in a proactive way to the underprivileged. The Joneses have two daughters—Megan, who will be thirteen in October and eight-year-old Caitlin. Both girls attend the Brearley School where A.J. is president of the Board of Trustees. Ashley has involved Brearley students in the All Souls Friday Soup Kitchen program where she has channeled much of her time. Under Ashley’s supervision, the girls have made placemats and flower arrangements for the dining tables and have undertaken other tasks to enhance one of the Church’s on-going and effective community service programs.

Alan Jones & Ashley Garrett and their daughters, Megan (13) and Caitlin (8) Jones.

The Joneses live on East End Avenue and have a marvelous view of the East River. They have beautifully restored an apartment in an older, gracious building, adding superb wood paneling throughout and modernizing all the windows and baths, and have designed a kitchen that makes one feel as if it were the ultra-modern interior of a boat. The reconstruction took more than a year, much longer than planned. Not least of the apartment’s advantages is that it is near the Brearley School. Week-ends and holidays are spent at their house in Poundridge, New York, a small village that for the most part has retained much of its New England country charm. “We drive out on Friday evening” Alan related, “and return to the city in about an hour Sunday morning to attend Sunday services at All Souls.”

A.J. joined Morgan Stanley in 1993, after eight years at First Boston where he was a Director in the High Yield Finance Group. In 1997, after four years at Morgan Stanley and serving in various positions, the firm moved Alan to London where he and his family lived for three years. There, he set up and managed Morgan Stanley’s European Leveraged Finance Department and was a member of the European Investment Banking Division Operating Committee and a Director of Morgan Stanley Bank (U.K.) “Living in London was truly wonderful,” said A.J. “It is truly an international city. There is so much diversity; one finds people from around the world. The pace of social and business life is just right. Using London as home base, we traveled extensively in Europe and Africa.”

“Europeans don’t have the same commitment to charitable organizations as Americans,” A.J. went on. “I was fortunate, though, to be able to continue my work for Everybody Wins! while I was living in London. I am a Director of this rapidly growing organization focused on at-risk children who fall behind in reading skills.” Everybody Wins! is a one-on-one mentoring program that builds reading skills and a love of reading through a prescribed list of books, age and achievement selected for use on a national level. More than half the states and Washington, DC, involving thousands of schools and nearly a million students are beneficiaries of Everybody Wins! carefully considered programs. The mentor-volunteers emanate from all walks of life, from corporate personnel and even the US Senate.

Before being appointed as Co-Head of Morgan Stanley’s new Private Equity Business, a recently created division of its Investment Management Group, A.J. was head of the firm’s Corporate Finance Department. The Wall Street Journal reported that Morgan Stanley plans to raise a multi-billion dollar fund comprised of the Bank’s funds and funds of institutional investors and also plans a separate fund to invest in infrastructure investments. Jones and his co-head Stephen Trevor, formerly a managing director at Goldman Sachs, will oversee direct investments, joint ventures, leveraged buyouts as well as infrastructure business.

A.J.’s impact on the outreach programs of All Souls has been considerable. Following 9/11, he served as Chairman of the All Souls Emergency Relief Fund and a Director of Musica Viva and the Heart & Soul Charitable Fund. The Emergency Relief Fund addressed the secondary impact of that horrific event, such as aid for small businesses in the area disrupted by the tragedy, psychological help and counseling for those who survived the attack and for school children in the area. He has also been involved with the All Souls Investment Committee.

Loyal to his alma mater, A.J. is Chief Fund Agent for Harvard Business School Class of 1987 and Fund Agent for the Harvard College Class of 1983. He is also a Director of Communities in Schools. In accord with his early interests, A.J. is a Director of the International Biomedical Research Alliance and of Physicians for Human Rights.

His interests also include world affairs and Government. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, the Institute for Strategic Studies and the Foreign Policy Association and serves as a Director of the Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt Institute. The Institute maintains the Roosevelt Library at Hyde Park, NY, and promulgates the democratic ideals of the Four Freedoms which the Roosevelts expressed as the basis for a democratic society. Schuyler Chapin serves as Chairman of the Board of Governors of the Institute and Forrest Church is a director. In 2003‑2004, A.J. was named a David Rockefeller Fellow, a program to create a bridge-partnership between private business and the public sector. Recently, he was a Director of the Shakespeare Society.