[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 147 (2001), Part 17]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page 24563]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]



                      IN HONOR OF VERNON K. JONES

                                 ______
                                 

                          HON. EDOLPHUS TOWNS

                              of new york

                    in the house of representatives

                       Thursday, December 6, 2001

  Mr. TOWNS. Mr. Speaker, I rise in honor of Vernon K. Jones in 
recognition of his remarkable career in business and as an 
entrepreneur.
  Vernon K. Jones is married to Marcella Jones, a dance teacher at JHS 
258, in Brooklyn; they have two sons, Vernon Jr. and Avery. They own a 
home in Clinton Hill, Brooklyn. Vernon has a Bachelor's Degree in 
Accounting with extensive coursework in Business Management and 
Marketing, from St. Francis College, in Brooklyn. He used his education 
to become an Accountant for the Industrial Bank of Japan. After working 
there for two years he joined Showtime/The Movie Channel as an 
Accounting Coordinator. Following one year in that position he decided 
to go out on his own and start his own business.
  Vernon started a commercial building maintenance company, Reliable 
Cleaning Corp. His company grew to employ over 25 full time and 15 part 
time employees. The company was re-organized in 1996, giving employees 
the opportunity to own and operate their own independent cleaning 
service business, as an alternative to franchising. Within a four-year 
period, Reliable, Inc. grew to over 150 accounts. Vernon helped to 
start over 50 entrepreneurs in their own commercial cleaning business 
in New York City. Last year, Mr. Jones sold his cleaning business to 
one of the companies that he helped to start so that he could fully 
concentrate on the development of his new business venture,'' 
itsaboute.com, inc''. His new corporation is responsible for creating 
business concepts and developing these concepts into strong independent 
businesses. ``Itsaboute.com, inc.'' will own a majority stake in each 
developed business. This has been a dream of Vernon's since he was a 
young boy, to own a majority stake in various businesses that he 
conceptualized.
  The first company developed by ``itsaboute.com, inc.'' is New York 
City Teachers, Inc. This company was developed to leverage the power of 
the teachers in the NYC Public School system. Through Vernon's 
marketing and business management experience, New York City Teachers, 
Inc. already have over 6,000 teachers on board with the company. This 
is remarkable because the company was just launched in May 2001, with 
the help of his wife, Marcella.
  Just as in the commercial cleaning business, Vernon is using 
unorthodox marketing strategies. He is giving all 81,000 NYC public 
school teachers an equity stake in the Corporation. The goal is to have 
all of the teachers involved, through a monthly newspaper that will be 
sent to every teacher's home, which will begin within the next 6 
months. He is also in the process of partnering with a Massachusetts 
company, which has agreed to provide Internet access to all NY Teachers 
and this will form a strong Online community, very similar to America 
Online. The online teacher community is ``NYCteachers.com'', and the 
offline teacher community will be the monthly newspaper, seminars 
events to honor good teachers, etc.
  In between running his businesses and spending time with his family. 
Vernon coaches youth basketball teams during, the summer, fall and 
winter seasons. This is his way to educate kids about life.
  Mr. Speaker, Vernon K. Jones is a remarkable businessman, 
entrepreneur and community leader. As such he is more than worthy of 
receiving our recognition today. I urge my colleagues to joining me in 
honoring this truly remarkable man.

                          ____________________