By Ameera Steward | The Birmingham Times
Not many employees at major colleges and universities retire and then have a scholarship renamed in their honor but that’s what happened to Birmingham’s Alesia Jones.
After working for The University of Alabama at Birmingham’s Human Resources department for more than 28 years, Jones retired in late 2021 and three months later began her own HR consulting agency in 2022.
But after retiring and starting her business, UAB and the COLLAT School of Business renamed the HR Management scholarship to the Alesia M. Jones HR Endowed Scholarship.
“It’s just an honor,” she said. “I am so appreciative of the opportunity to leave that legacy in the field that has done so much for me,” said Jones.
Founded in 2022, AMJ HR Solutions, LLC is an agency that specializes in executive searches, compensation assessments, talent and leadership development programs, employee onboarding and retention initiatives and a number of other areas.
“If there’s a place I can bring some of the expertise I’ve gained in my career to help [people]- that’s what I want to do,” said Jones who has more than 30 years in the HR field including 28 at UAB.
“It’s really important that you keep a pulse and an eye on your people, making sure that all of the programs…services and policies to support people are in place and that they’re operating properly,” Jones said.
“That’s really been the thread that flows through my entire life and career, and it’s making sure that businesses and people are connected, and businesses keep their people connected…so that they thrive, and when your workforce is thriving, businesses thrive. So the key part for me is being a conduit to help make that happen.”
The business owner currently has four major clients that she is working with whose projects are in various stages.
A Blaze-ing Legacy
Jones was born in Tuskegee, Alabama. and grew up in Atlanta and relocated to Birmingham during her sophomore year of high school.
She attended Huffman High School and graduated in ’85 and then enrolled into The University of Alabama where she began studying finance.
The thought process after high school was “just to go to college and find a job.” she said. “I could wear a suit and carry a briefcase. And someone said, ‘well you should be in finance.’”
She got an internship in finance and “I didn’t like it at all.” Her professor asked her why “I said, ‘I’m fine doing the work. I just want to have more interaction with people. I want to help people solve problems…and he suggested I take a human resource course, specifically the compensation course because it is a combination of people…numbers…data…and solving problems. And I fell in love with it,” she said.
So during her junior year she changed her major to general management — since there was no major in Human Resources — with a concentration in HR. She acquired another internship aligned with her new major and “that sealed the deal.”
After her undergraduate studies, Jones worked at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) as a recruiter for its temp service.
She also decided to make a list of things she wanted to accomplish by the age of 40, and one happened to be leading an HR department.
“I spent some time and I studied people who were in those kinds of jobs and what their backgrounds [were], and I realized that most of them had either law degrees or MBAs [Master of Business Administration] … there was a really big push to make sure that [at the time] in the spectrum of the HR profession, that it was being seen as more of the business, that is was a [core] function of the business.”
She decided to pursue her MBA from the University of Alabama at Birmingham, graduating in the late 90s.
While continuing her work at UAB, she made sure everyone in leadership knew that the compensation work is what drew her to HR.
“I progressed fairly quickly…when I left [UAB] after 11 years I was the Director of Compensation and Benefits,” she said. “I assumed the benefits function too. I learned that comp and benefits kind of go hand in hand…there’s a lot of data and a lot of analysis, and that’s another way to help people.”
After 11 years with UAB, she left to work for Bell South and BE&K, a global engineering and construction company based in Birmingham. The company is named after its founders: Peter Bolvig, William Edmonds, and Ted Kennedy.
“I was very happy at BE&K…there were quiet whispers that I was being considered to replace my boss…at the time,” Jones said. “But I met…the person who was the Chief HR Officer at UAB…her name was Cheryl Locke…I had dinner with her and left that dinner and thought ‘this is somebody I would really love to work with.’”
Return To UAB
An executive director role opened, requiring the director to report directly to Locke and “had a pretty sizable scope of responsibility that would help position me to get to my 21-year-old goal of having a top HR job by the time I was 40.” As a result, in 2005 Jones returned to UAB as the executive director of HR.
Soon Locke left in 2007 and Jones became interim and served as interim for 9 months and then competed for the Chief HR Officer job and was appointed to the position in 2009.
“One of the greatest honors of my career was to spend 13 years as the Chief HR Officer for UAB…I missed my…target of getting there at the age of 40 by two years but…I hit it.,” said Jones, who retired in 2021.
“That was the hardest part, leaving my team,” she said. “We had done great things together, and walking away from them was hard, but I really got to a point where I just decided it was time for me to just step away.”
However, her retirement did not last long.
AMJ HR Solutions
After leaving UAB, “I wasn’t thinking about what would come next, and I really wanted to take a little time, because I just really needed a break.”
While speaking with some of her friends, one of them told her they wanted to help her set up an LLC because Jones may need it to provide consulting.
“Three months after I got it set up…someone called and asked if I could help them with…an HR project,” she said. “And then someone else called, and then someone else called, and the next thing I knew I was like ‘oh my goodness…I need to slow down and get my arms around this because this is really becoming a real business.’”
Creating an LLC morphed into an opportunity to help people solve their HR problems who may have not had the opportunity to hire someone with her level of experience.
Her mission is “to help leaders meet their HR needs, particularly small [to] medium sized businesses. If there’s a place I can bring some of the expertise I’ve gained in my career to help them – that’s what I want to do.”
Jones can be reached at amjhrsolutions.org
