Jonathan "JT" Wu

Founder & Executive Director

A proud Georgia native, JT founded Preface with one goal in mind: helping children of all backgrounds gain access to the tools, resources, and mentorship necessary to achieve their American Dreams. As a child of immigrants, who were themselves scholarship graduates of the University of Mississippi, JT has witnessed firsthand the transformative impact that access to education can have on young lives and is passionate about fostering those opportunities in Gwinnett County - and beyond.

JT's robust private-and-public-sector experiences inform his heart for innovation, while his academic research focused on leveraging the potential of public-private partnerships and multilateral institutions to create systemic policy solutions. He previously served in Citigroup's Global Capital Markets division and the U.S. State Department's Office of Foreign Assistance, where he liaised on the efficacy of American developmental aid. Concurrently with his leadership of Preface, JT has also led Mergers, Acquisitions, and Policy Development teams across a variety of sectors from healthcare to real estate; and he currently serves as the Vice President of Corporate Development at Meadowlark Title.

JT remains active in his community, serving on leadership at Brookhaven Presbyterian Church and acting as a Founding Principal of BCD Properties, an affordable housing initiative aiming to reduce rent-dependence and wealth inequality in the metro Atlanta area. Additionally, he is the Chairman of the Gwinnett County Public Library Board of Trustees and serves on the boards of the Alchemy Sky Foundation, a music-oriented support system for Georgia veterans, the Jacqueline Casey Hudgens Center for Art and Learning, the Georgia Rotary Laws of Life Essay Contest, and the Special Needs School of Gwinnett. He has been honored by YNPN Atlanta as one of its 2020 30 Under 30 Nonprofit Leaders and serves on the Young Professionals Advisory Board for the Gwinnett County Chamber of Commerce.

More recently, he has been recognized as one of the Top 25 Most Influential Asian-Americans in Georgia by the Georgia Asian Times, been honored by the Points of Light Foundation as a community changemaker, and has been named a Young Leader by the Council of the United States and Italy.

An alumnus of the McCallie School, JT received an A.B. cum laude in Public Policy from Princeton University's School of Public and International Affairs, specializing in international institutions and global governance, while simultaneously obtaining dual certificates in Finance and East Asian Studies.