Mark Jones, BPE'82

Content note: This profile contains discussion of youth suicide, trauma and child abuse. 

Long before Mark Jones, BPE'82, became a student at the University of Calgary, he already knew the campus by heart. 

Growing up in Brentwood, just a few blocks away, he and his friends rode their bikes to the university to play basketball. They wandered through MacEwan Hall, grabbed fries and gravy between games, and cut through the buildings on winter afternoons to stay warm walking home. When Calgary prepared to host the 1988 Winter Olympics, he watched the campus evolve before his eyes. By the time he enrolled in what was then the Faculty of Physical Education (now Kinesiology), the university didn't feel unfamiliar. It felt like home. 

Looking back, it's fitting that so much of Jones' life has been defined by building communities. Before he dedicated his career to creating places where children and families could find safety, support and hope, he first experienced what it meant to truly belong. Jones credits much of that instinct to his parents, who taught him the importance of giving back and leaving something better than you found it.  

"My mom and dad were very giving people," Jones says. "It's not a surprise where I got it from." 

Over the next four decades, Jones would become a teacher, principal and one of Alberta's most respected community leaders. Along the way, he developed a habit of noticing what was missing, not to criticize it, but to ask how people could come together, fill the gap and build something better. 

That instinct would eventually help transform the way vulnerable children and families receive support in Central Alberta. But it began much earlier, in classrooms and school hallways. 

"I always believed kids don't care how much you know until they know how much you care," Jones says. 

During his more than 35 years in public education, relationships came before everything else. He made a point of knowing every student by name. He got to know their parents and, often, their grandparents. He attended their games, celebrated their successes and tried to understand the lives they lived beyond the classroom. 

Education, to Jones, was never simply about academics and accomplishments. It was about people: the teacher who believed in you, the mentor who changed your direction or the counsellor who helped you see a future you hadn't imagined. 

That philosophy shaped his leadership as his career progressed from teacher to principal and eventually into senior leadership. Schools, he believed, could become the centre of a community when people were willing to work together around a common purpose.  

It was a belief that would be tested.  

Over roughly five or six years in the early 2010s, the Red Deer community experienced a devastating series of youth suicides. Jones estimates there were 10 in total. The losses shook the community, and they remain difficult for him to talk about today. In September of 2015, the suicide of 22-year-old Lindsay More, a close friend of his own children who had spent time in the Jones family home, sparked the larger conversation about youth mental health and what could be done to prevent these devastating losses. 

"It became personal," he recalls. 

At Lindsay's funeral, he watched her best friend, Cassandra Galenzoski, now a colleague of his, delivered the eulogy. Like many people in attendance, Jones was heartbroken. 

He left asking himself a simple question: Surely, as a community, we could do better? What more could be done to support youth mental health in Central Alberta? 

Jones connected with Sheldon Kennedy and they talked about youth mental health in conjunction with the effects of abuse on children, youth and their families.  

The discussion forced Jones to confront something uncomfortable. Despite decades in education, he realized there were signs of abuse and trauma he simply hadn't been taught to recognize. 

"I didn't even know. I was an educator. No one taught me how to recognize the signs of abuse." 

Rather than accepting tragedy as inevitable, Jones began following the model of Child Advocacy Centres by bringing together educators, police, health-care professionals, social workers and community organizations to build a different approach, one where children and families experiencing abuse or trauma wouldn't have to navigate disconnected systems on their own or relive their experiences over and over again. 

Working alongside community leaders, including Sheldon Kennedy, Jones helped turn that vision into the Central Alberta Child Advocacy Centre. By bringing law enforcement, healthcare, social services and legal supports together under one roof, the Centre fundamentally changed how children and families experienced recovery, replacing fragmented systems with coordinated, trauma-informed care. That collaborative model continued to evolve, culminating in the opening of the Sheldon Kennedy Centre of Excellence in 2023, where integrated service delivery, research, prevention and education work hand in hand. 

"From the very beginning, Mark believed we could do better for kids," says Kennedy. "He turned that belief into action, building a model that brings people together to support children and families in the moments they need it most." 

Creating the centre required years of collaboration, fundraising and persistence. Jones is quick to point out that it was never the work of one person. Throughout our conversation, he repeatedly shifted the spotlight toward the many people who shared the journey: community leaders, volunteers, partners, donors and colleagues who believed vulnerable children deserved something better. 

"Vulnerable children can't help themselves," Jones says. "As adults, we need to be the people that help them." 

That humility makes it almost difficult to tell Jones' story. Every accomplishment quickly becomes someone else's. Ask about the Central Alberta Child Advocacy Centre, and he talks about the community that rallied behind it. Ask about leadership, and he credits his team. Ask about receiving the Distinguished Alumni Award, and he thanks the people who walked alongside him. 

For Jones, leadership has never been about standing at the front of the room. It has always been about bringing the right people into it. It is the same mindset which shaped one of the Centre's most important decisions. 

As plans for the Child Advocacy Centre took shape, Jones received a piece of advice he never forgot: if the organization succeeded, he could end up spending the rest of his life fundraising. 

He wasn't convinced that had to be true. Instead, he and his team challenged themselves to build something truly sustainable. Working with financial experts, community leaders and supporters, they developed a model designed to keep the Centre focused on children and families rather than the next fundraising campaign. 

It reflected the way Jones had always approached leadership: Solving today's problems isn’t enough if tomorrow's generations inherits the same ones. The goal wasn't simply to open the Centre, but to ensure it would never have to stop serving children because the organization itself had failed. 

That same instinct continued to shape Jones' life. Whether in education, child advocacy or community recreation, he saw needs not as barriers, but as opportunities to bring people together to build lasting solutions. 

Ask Jones what he's most proud of, and he doesn't point to the buildings that were built or the recognition he's received. Instead, he tells the story of a young woman who found him at a community event years after receiving support through the Central Alberta Child Advocacy Centre. 

"You don't remember me," she told him. "But I remember you because you said you were going to do everything you could to make my life better." 

She paused before adding two simple words: 

"You did." 

For a man who has spent a lifetime measuring success by the lives of others, it was all the recognition he needed. 

While receiving the University of Calgary Distinguished Alumni Award for Lifetime Achievement is an extraordinary honour, in many ways it feels like a full-circle moment. The university that first taught him the importance of community is now recognizing a graduate who has spent his life building it. 

Jones doesn't measure his career by titles held or projects completed. He measures it by whether people are better because they crossed paths with him, whether communities are stronger because people chose to work together, and whether children who needed hope found it.  

"Whatever life you have, make someone else's better," he says. 

Distinguished Alumni Award for Lifetime Achievement 

The highest honour awarded by the UCalgary Alumni Association, this award recognizes graduates who, over the course of their lives, have made notable contributions that have improved their profession and community. Having reached the pinnacle of professional and personal success, they enrich the lives of others through their leadership, shared knowledge, creativity and innovation.