Throughout his career as a producer, director, and educator, Dean Jones has been an advocate for racial equity and social justice. In 1998, he led a special committee to diversify the Radio City Rockettes; served as president for the Tony® Award-winning Alliance for Inclusion in the Arts; from 2010 to 2018, chaired the Diversity Committee for the Theater Communications Group (TCG), and since 2019, served as co-chair of Equity & Access Committee of the NJ Theatre Alliance, for which he also serves as president.

Professor Jones initiated the Rutgers Summer Acting Conservatory for high school students, a boot camp for actors. For 20 years, this month-long summer residency program trained more than 750 students.

Additionally, Jones has decades of theater producing experience in a wide variety of executive positions at several notable New York City venues, including the Apollo Theater, Madison Square Garden, Radio City Music Hall, and Disney’s Broadway production of The Lion King.

For 13 seasons (2007–2020), he was the producing artistic director for the Tony® Award-winning Crossroads Theatre Company, where he directed several shows. Crossroads received the NJ Stage Award “Best Theater for World/NJ Premiere” for three straight years.

In the spring of 2018, he served as the creative consultant (replacement director) for the Off-Broadway production of Little Rock, about the famed Little Rock Nine of 1957, (NY Times Critic’s Pick). And in 2015, Nikkole Salter’s Repairing a Nation was recorded for TV broadcast on WNET’s Theater Close-Up series.

Jones continues to professionally direct plays at reputable regional theaters throughout the country.

Jones is a 2020 inductee into the Rutgers University African-American Hall of Fame.