Jamie Jones Miller

To celebrate Women’s History Month, Dress For Success Washington, DC highlights Jamie Jones Miller, a former National Security executive and the national president of Alpha Sigma Tau Sorority. As she transitions her career to academia, Jamie brings 20+ years of experience on Capitol Hill and at the Department of Defense leading high-performing teams and developing and executing strategic legislative and policy initiatives. Jamie also serves on several boards of directors and has over 15 years of experience serving nonprofit organizations.

Jamie is extremely passionate about opening doors for women, which has driven her involvement in Dress For Success Washington, DC. She is a proud member of the Little Black Dress club, a DFSWDC volunteer, and an advocate for the organization in her community.

Check out Jamie’s advice to women on making career transitions!

What motivates you to do your job every day?

I'm actually transitioning out of the government affairs field into academia. I'm about to take on a new role that lends my professional career in national security and public service, with my passion for building the next generation of leaders. What I really enjoy about that is helping other people identify and leverage their strengths and their talents to solve complex problems. When I'm enjoying what I'm doing at work, or in a volunteer space, it's really serving others–to help them make an impact. And that feels very rewarding to me.

What advice would you give to women who are looking to make a career change?

In this stage of someone's career, how you enter and exit a role can be just as important, if not more important, than that middle space of when you're actually doing the job. For example, when working with corporations and companies on clients at my firm, it's about relationships. I have viewed myself as kind of a caretaker of relationships for my clients, and how you steer those relationships and honor those relationships is really important. That requires a lot of communication. I've been very careful in how I have navigated any career transition to make sure I am being respectful and professional in honoring the current role that I'm in, and then preparing myself to start fresh. You have to build reputation and trust and credibility in a new role. I think that focusing on relationships, authentic communication, and building trust, is really important during a career transition or when you start a new job.