Enid-Mai Jones was born in Monrovia, Liberia, the last of five children,
with deep roots in Liberian law, government, and civic life. She grew up
with high expectations and even higher ambitions — and at sixteen, she acted
on both. She applied to the AFS-USA International Exchange Program, was accepted,
and spent a year with a host family in Woodland, Washington — her first experience
of life beyond everything she had known. She returned home and enrolled at the
University of Liberia, but growing civil unrest made it clear that staying was
not an option. She continued her education in the United States, was accepted
to the University of Kansas, and earned both her bachelor's degree and her first
master's degree there. Then the ground shifted again. The Liberian Civil War
broke out in 1990, cutting her off from her family and her homeland overnight.
Displaced and without work experience, she took the only job available: a night
shift on a production line at a plastics factory in Kansas. She could not keep
up with the machines. She did not quit. Over time, she earned a spot as a
printer — because her hands were small enough to calibrate the plates with a
precision no one else could match. That season taught her something no degree
had: that reinvention is not a metaphor. It is work, and it is where you find
out what you are actually made of.
She eventually earned her second master's degree and made her way into
association management — a field where she spent more than two decades
building education programs, growing revenue, and leading organizations
through change. She went from program director to senior vice president,
consistently delivering results that outlasted her roles. When she recognized
that the impact she was capable of required the freedom to act on her own
terms, she made the move from employee to entrepreneur — founding EMJ Consulting
and her personal brand, Being Her, and stepping fully into the work she was
built to do.
