Neonu Jewell is committed to creating transformative results in the world. Her mission is to engage, educate, and empower people through academic scholarship and practical approaches for interfaith engagement, justice, equity, and inclusion. She is a diversity, equity, and inclusion expert and former corporate attorney.
Neonu began her legal career as a corporate and international regulatory compliance attorney. She served as global trade counsel in Fortune 100 companies, including Accenture, Lockheed Martin, and Raytheon. Career highlights include facilitating seminars for thousands of people and supporting hundreds of individual clients to achieve extraordinary personal results. In addition, she published a legal update, “Equal Pay Act,” in the Georgetown Journal of Gender and the Law (2002, 625-38).
Neonu is the Chief Diversity and Inclusion Officer for the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation. In that role, she is a trusted advisor providing strategic and operational expertise on the agency’s Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility vision, programs, and policies. She is also earning a Ph.D. in interreligious engagement and social ethics from Union Theological Seminary, Columbia University (UTS).
Neonu is the recipient of UTS’s Scholarly Excellence Award, Interreligious Engagement Prize, and Union Heritage Scholarship. She is also an interfaith minister and founder of Niyah Center, an interfaith and empowerment community.
Neonu holds a Juris Doctor degree from Georgetown University Law School, as well as both a Master of Business Administration degree and a Bachelor of Science degree in Business Administration from Florida A & M University (FAMU), and a Master of Divinity from Union Theological Seminary, Columbia University.