Major Danielle Jones: Leadership in the Margins
Written by Trista Havner
Photographed by Cari Griffith
When I was in my very last semester of my senior year of college, I was forced to sit through a four-hour-long “seminar” about the tenants of leadership. The last thing an almost graduate wants to do is endure yet another PowerPoint presentation, and each slide detailed the same banal descriptions of how to garner respect from your peers or ways to conduct a meeting to keep your audience’s attention (the presenter obviously did not see the irony). But one line stuck out to me enough that I remember it nearly twenty years later — “if you want respect, you must command it.” That resonated with twenty-one-year-old me. If I wanted to be taken seriously, I needed to carve out a space for myself and be the loudest voice in the room. And, in some ways, that served me well enough. I did, however, find myself drawn to the quietest voices in the room. The ones who did not demand space or respect, but who earned it with consistency and care. Their leadership looked wildly different than what I was sold and truly transformed the way I approached life.
Professional experience after personal experience revealed that the people in the trenches, creating programs and changes that matter, are often the ones who never receive praise or recognition. They are steady and unyielding, a quiet force. And it’s intriguing. Are those people really just altruistic with a higher threshold for thankless work or is there some innate impulse that compels them to keep showing up? As I sat across from Major Danielle Jones in her office on a foggy November Wednesday, I got the impression that maybe it is a lot of both.
Danielle Jones is a kindred spirit — a born-and-raised Jacksonian who grew up in East Jackson, attending Washington Douglass Elementary School, Jackson Junior High, and eventually North Side High School. Danielle described herself as a “nerd” who enjoyed school and an introvert that relished time with family, which instilled values of respect for others and recognizing the dignity of every human being. While at North Side, Danielle participated in the ROTC program and had plans to join the military upon graduation. She was also interested in attending college in Hawaii. Neither of those avenues opened though, and she decided to attend Lane College (and later Bethel University). Her initial plan was to be an attorney, and she might have followed that career path had it not been for an internship with the Jackson Police Department. She found herself excited by the work as she discovered that the role of a police officer was so much more than what she imagined and that much of an officer’s day consisted of service to individuals and the community. In 2001, Danielle graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in Criminal Justice, continuing her position as a patrol officer.
I could fill many pages with Major Jones’ career accolades, but instead I will summarize them (which in no way diminishes her amazing upward trajectory). In 2002, Danielle started as a patrol officer for the Jackson Police Department. By 2006, she was an investigator with the Violent Crimes Unit of the JPD, specializing in child and sexual abuse. She graduated with her master’s degree in 2013 and was promoted to Sergeant over the newly formed Special Investigation Bureau of JPD. In 2017, she was promoted to Lieutenant and is currently in the role of overseeing the Safe Hope Center, which is dedicated to ending domestic and sexual violence. In 2020, Lieutenant Jones began working with the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation as a Task Force Agent for the Human Trafficking Unit. And, in August of 2022, Lieutenant Jones was promoted to Captain over Investigative Services Division, which encompasses the Safe Hope Center and General Investigations Bureau. And in January of 2026, Captain Jones became Major Jones, yet another promotion in line with her work ethic and leadership abilities. She is the first female Major that the Jackson Police Department has ever employed. As if that were not enough, she also writes and manages grants for the police department and maintains the budgets for these units.
I read all of these accomplishments before I went to interview Major Jones, and I had never met her before that Wednesday afternoon. In my mind, I constructed the type of person I thought would have this kind of meteoric career rise — a smart, self-assured, tempered person, perhaps with a booming voice. After all, she is a Major, and that meant that she commanded attention. I was mostly right. She is all of those things, but as we shook hands and I began asking her questions, I could see that her command is one of care and concern for her neighbor, a quiet and steady extension of her help and her hands. She answered my questions softly and intentionally, and I could immediately see that her power was in her presence.
I was very interested in what motivated her to work with domestic and sexual abuse survivors. So much of what Major Jones does on a daily basis is hard, draining work, and I wanted to know how she maintained her emotional fortitude. She agreed that this type of work can be taxing, but the recurring theme in her responses was presence. Showing up to meet a neighbor at their lowest, holding their hands, and walking them through picking up the pieces after tragedy is what keeps her doing the work. And so much of what she loves about her position is the service aspect. She has gone to divorce hearings, fed hungry people, given out her personal number so that a neighbor can contact her, and stood in gaps when the divide looked insurmountable. When I asked her why she goes that extra step, she explained that she “is the person that needs to do something, or at least try.”
If you boil leadership down, that is what remains. Leadership is what we do when no one is there to see us do it. Major Jones’ leadership exists in the margins.
As we wrapped up our interview, I wanted to hear specifically about how she models leadership for her colleagues. After hearing her talk about her values, it was no surprise to me that she said, “I don’t ask anyone to do what I wouldn’t do myself.” When she sees a need, she steps in to meet it. No waiting on a subordinate to come in and handle what she can handle herself. Major Jones does not measure leadership in recognition or accolades but in needs met. And that mentality has impacted her team and the care she extends them. She is interested in helping people grow into themselves, and with a leader who is eager to see others excel, growth is a natural outcome.
As I always do, I asked Major Jones about her goals and vision for her future and the future of our community. Professionally, she would like to see how far she can go in the Jackson Police Department to impact as many people and policies as possible. Personally (because she is a human in that uniform, after all), she would love to enjoy more time with family and record a song with her dad, as music has always been a bond they share. Mostly, Major Jones just wants to be present. Available to anyone who might need her, and carefully and consistently stepping in to impact her community for good.
Major Jones has every right to demand respect. The list of her professional accolades is impressive and important, and she has earned every bit of her authority. And yet, she approaches her job, her colleagues, her community, even me, with a softness, a quiet and consistent presence bent towards service, not recognition.