A proud lifelong Georgian and Gwinnett County native, Jonathan "JT" Wu is an accomplished public and private sector executive with a deep passion for high-impact educational policy that supports the next generation.

Wu serves as the Chairman of the Gwinnett County Public Library Board of Trustees, overseeing the largest circulating library system in the state of Georgia. The first Asian American to ever hold the role, he oversees the sprawling gold-standard system’s 15 branches, $25M+ budget, and 250+ staff members, and has overseen a 10x ROI for public funds invested in the system, delivering over $258 million in workforce development, cradle-to-career learning, and multilingual educational initiatives in 2022 alone.

Wu is also the Founder and Executive Director of Preface – an award-winning, Georgia-grown, and nationally operating early childhood literacy nonprofit initiative that recruits and trains service-oriented high school students to enhance early childhood literacy in their own local classrooms.

Utilizing innovative high-impact and low-cost peer-mentorship models designed by expert Georgia educators, Preface has been recognized by the Georgia Department of Education as a High-Impact Tutoring Program and currently serves as a no-cost preferred partner of Gwinnett County Public Schools – in addition to being utilized by teachers and school systems in 13 states (and growing) across America.

Preface supercharges the efforts of frontline teachers on the ground by facilitating highly customizable, and often multilingual, virtual reading sessions that have helped bring students from functional illiteracy to reading at and above grade level in as few as ten weeks– even through the challenges of COVID-19.

As a child of immigrants himself who came to the United States on a Fulbright Scholarship and met at the University of Mississippi, Wu is passionate about bringing together public and private sector expertise to help children of all backgrounds gain access to the tools, resources, and mentorship necessary to achieve their American Dreams - both throughout Georgia and all across America.

He also brings extensive pro-growth private sector experience to bear, having held executive roles across the private sector, including at Meadowlark Title, National Spine & Pain Centers, Prospira Paincare, and Citigroup's Global Capital Markets division and has served in a public-private capacity in the U.S. State Department's Office of Foreign Assistance, where he liaised on the efficacy of American developmental aid.

A member of the Rotary Club of Duluth, Wu 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 serves on the board of Georgia 1st, a bipartisan organization committed to preserving a strong economy for Georgians that emphasizes opportunity, innovation, and fiscal responsibility; the Alchemy Sky Foundation, a music-oriented support system for Georgia veterans; the Georgia Rotary Clubs Laws of Life Essay Contest; the Jacqueline Casey Hudgens Center for Art and Learning; 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 previously served on the Young Professionals Advisory Board for the Gwinnett County Chamber of Commerce.

More recently, Wu has been recognized as one of the Top 25 Most Influential Asian-Americans in Georgia by the Georgia Asian Times, honored by the Points of Light Foundation as a community changemaker, named a Young Leader by the Council of the United States and Italy, and chosen as a GeorgiaForward “Young Gamechanger” by the Georgia Municipal Association. An alumnus of both Gwinnett County Public Schools and the McCallie School, Wu graduated cum laude with a degree in Public Policy from Princeton University's School of Public and International Affairs.