Nona Jones (Head of Faith-Based Partnerships at Facebook)

The episode you're about to listen to was released back when the Mere Christians podcast was called the Call to Mastery. Now, if you love Mere Christians, you're still going to love these older episodes because the majority of each conversation focuses on how the gospel influences the work of our guests. With that disclaimer out of the way, please enjoy the episode. Hey, everybody. Welcome to the Call to Mastery. I'm Jordan Raynor. This is a podcast for Christians who want to do their most exceptional work for the glory of God and the good of others. Every week, I host a conversation with a Christ follower who's pursuing world class mastery of their vocation. We talk about their path to mastery, their daily habits, and how their faith influences their work. I am thrilled to bring you guys today's guest, Nona Jones. She is the head of faith based partnerships at Facebook and before that had a crazy impressive career in corporate America in the nonprofit sector and a couple of other places. Nona and I sat down, we talked about her traumatic childhood and how that's impacted her life and her work. We talked about how to cultivate curiosity along the path to mastery and the importance of budgeting time to reflect into our days. I think you're really going to enjoy this conversation with my new friend, Nona Jones. Nona, thanks for being here.

Oh, thank you so much for having me. This is my pleasure.

Yeah. So I realized this when I was prepping for the conversation. We share a book birthday success from the inside out. January 21, 2020, right?

Yeah, that's right.

Yeah, that's when my last book, Master of One, came out. I'm really glad that we released these books in January instead of March.

Yeah, when the world shut down. Yeah.

So bad for all my friends releasing books around that time. So, hey, Nona, you've talked pretty openly about the beginning of your story, right? And your childhood. Pretty traumatic childhood that led to really you coming to Faith in Christ. I was wondering if you would start by sharing part of that story with us.

Oh, of course. Yeah. Well, you know, it's. It's interesting. I'm in ministry now, and I think a lot of people tend to assume that I may have grown up in the church, but that's not the case. So I was born to a mother who actually didn't want to have children. And my mother and my father had been married for about 13 years before she found out she was pregnant with me. And I think the reason why she didn't want to have children is she grew up in a really dysfunctional situation. She was one of of 12 kids, they had very little money, there was a lot of violence. So she decided early on she didn't want children. So halfway through her pregnancy, my father started to have stomach pain. And he went to have some tests run and when the results came back, he was diagnosed with terminal stomach cancer. And they gave him six months to live. Which when you add that to the fact that my mother didn't want to have children in the first place, was just a really difficult time because now she was basically going to be raising me alone. So my father, he fought really, really hard to defy that diagnos. But he passed away shortly before my second birthday. And it was right after that that my mom moved us to the other side of the country. She was following after a guy who she barely knew, but he promised to take care of her and me. And that relationship essentially disintegrated right after we moved. And so there was like a string of men that came in and out of her life the first few years that we were there. But when I was around five, she landed on a guy who became her live in boyfriend. And shortly after that he became abusive to me, sexually abusive. My mother was verbally. She started to become physically abusive as well. It was just a really, really difficult time. This all started when I was about 5 and she didn't know that he was abusing me. But I told her a couple of years into it because it was happening pretty frequently. And she had him arrested, which I was really grateful for. But on the day of his release from jail, she took me with her, pick him up and brought him back home. And the abuse resumed from then. And so, you know, having essentially told her what was happening and she basically chose him over me, I decided that it was pointless for me to tell her that he was continuing to abuse me. And so I really internalized, I think, the dysfunction that was happening around me, feelings of being unwanted. My mother told me she didn't want me. So all of that essentially added up to. When I was about nine, I tried to take my life unsuccessfully. And I tried again when I was 11, unsuccessfully. But it was shortly after that. I was in the sixth grade and my classmate invited me to go to church with her. I didn't know what church was. I thought maybe we were going to go over her house. Her mother came and picked me up, took me to the church thing. And I remember when I walked in those doors that day, it was incredible because. But the first time I actually felt love, I felt like I was welcome. Like I was wanted. And the very first sermon I ever heard that day, the pastor said, God is a father to the fatherless. He was preaching out of Psalm chapter 68. Having not known, you know, who God was, having no sense of higher power, I immediately was like, well, who is God? Because I want my father. And so that really became the catalyst for my faith journey, starting at 11 years old. And, you know, the abuse did not end right then, but I think it was absolutely that. That became my saving grace and really gave me a sense of hope for the future. So that's. That's kind of how my life started. And it's really just a testament to grace, just the miraculous power of God.

And into friends willing to share the gospel and just build relationships with us. So that's the beginning of your story. Let's fast forward all the way to today. How did you get to Facebook? So your career story is, like, super interesting to me. How'd you wind up at Facebook?

Yeah, so my life is. I often describe myself as a statistically improbable product of grace because my life, it just. It's so clear that God was involved. But the short answer to how I ended up at Facebook is God. I was in a job that I loved, thought I would be in it for the rest of my life. I was helping lead a network of alternative schools for girls in Florida, schools for girls who had experienced trauma, which was part of my own life mission. And so I was loving what I was doing. And In April of 2017, I found myself in prayer. I was just asking God for some wisdom and direction relative to that role. And as I was praying, I heard the Spirit say, this assignment is over. And that really caught me by surprise because that definitely was not what I wanted. So I prayed again a few days later, and I heard the same thing. This assignment is over. And so I said, all right, Lord, well, if this assignment is over, then what's next? And the only thing, the only direction I got was resign at the end of the fiscal year, which would have been June 30, 2017. So I essentially had two months to prepare my resignation letter and basically just meet with my boss. I met with her that day, it ended up being a Friday. Met with her, gave her my letter of resignation. That was around 1pm we talked until about 1:40 or so, and then I got in the car and I was driving home. And at 2:05, my cell phone rang. It was an unfamiliar number. It was a 650 area code. It just said San Francisco, California, which I wasn't going to take the call because I was like, this must be a telemarketer. But the spirit told me to take the call, and so I did. And after that happened, the woman on the other end said, hi, is this Nona Jones? And I said, yes. And she said, I'm calling from Facebook. And it was like, facebook doesn't call.

People, so maybe it is a telemarketer.

Yeah, yeah, I figured. I was like, what is this? And she proceeded to tell me that, in fact, she worked for Facebook. And apparently the week before, Mark changed the mission of the company to focus on community building, which was interesting to me, but I didn't know. And she basically said that the company had found out that the largest community that was the most meaningful to the people who were in them were communities of faith. And so she had gotten my name to talk to about helping the company with this new work. And in my mind, I thought it was like a committee or an advisory board. Like, it didn't dawn on me that it was a job until I got home, because I said to her, I said, well, listen, send me some information. I'll look at it over the weekend, and we can talk Monday. And when I open my email, there was a job description. So, yeah, yeah, that's basically how it happened. And two weeks later, I had. I had my offer letter on my birthday. So it was quite an interesting journey.

And what's the 30 second pitch description of what you do at Facebook?

There's my job description for Facebook, and then there's what I believe I've been called to do. So I'll tell you what I've been called to do. I believe that I have been called to Facebook in order to equip the church globally, to do discipleship digitally. I think COVID 19 has definitely awakened people to the reality that you don't have to have a date, time, or location in order to have church. You can actually be the church 168 hours a week. And so my job is really to help people use Facebook's tools in order to discover that possibility.

Very relevant for this moment. By the way, I'm really curious. I was reading your story, and it's a fascinating trajectory to Facebook. Right? So you're doing business strategy at a Fortune 100 company. You were doing public affairs for this utility. You were in the nonprofit sector. You're now at Facebook. And as I'm reading through your bio, this book came to mind that I'm really curious if you've read it's called Smart Cuts by Shane Snow. Do you know this?

Nope.

Oh my gosh. It's one of my favorite books of all time. I'll have to send you a copy. Basically the gist, it's your story. It's how people do remarkable things professionally in really short periods of time. And it's all about lateral thinking, right? So you climb up a ladder, but you jump to this tangential ladder that exponentially increases learning and the speed at which you're able to get to the next one. So as I was reading through your. But I was like, oh, that's it. So setting up my next question. So you progress pretty rapidly up the ladder in the world of business. I'm curious to hear what you think about what's the difference between good and great in business. As an executive, what separates great executives from, from the merely good ones?

You know, I think it's, it's. Well, it's a few things. One is, and this is something that I've had to learn through trial and error in my life, the main one really is how you regard people. Because I think as a leader you're only as effective as the people who choose to follow you. And let me be super clear here, just because you hire somebody, just because they're on your staff, they doesn't necessarily mean that they are following you. It could very well mean that they're just employed by you. I believe that the best leaders are people who inspire vision, they inspire the greatness and the people who choose to follow them. So I think that's number one. I think the second thing is being just very. This is going to sound strange, but being very clear in your convictions, like this is what I believe we should do, but holding them loosely. So some people have really deep convictions about what should happen, that's great. But if you don't hold them loosely when new data comes that maybe disproves your convictions, you can end up taking your organization in a, in a very bad direction just because of your so called gut. So I think you always want to have a point of view but hold it loosely and be willing to allow new data to, to prove you wrong. I think that's hard because leaders, I think naturally have some degree of ego. I mean, you wouldn't be a leader if you didn't. But you can't allow your ego to make your decisions for you. So those are just a few thoughts I would offer that I think separates the good from the great.

Isn't the difference there curiosity? Oh yeah, it's the willingness to perpetually be learning and asking good questions. That that's how you. That's how you're able to have convictions and hold them loosely.

I think I talk about that pretty extensively. That's actually a chapter in my book where I actually invite people to build curiosity. I think you have to be a perpetual learner. I read a. I try to read a book a week. I think that's. And it's not even just leadership or management or tech. I'm reading actually a few books concurrently now. But one that I'm reading is called Something Deeply Hidden. It's a book about quantum physics. And it's like, why would I be reading a book about quantum physics? It has nothing to do with my life. Well, but it's interesting because there are some theories that are proposed in quantum physics that actually can help, you know, shape the way that I make decisions in the world. And so something like that. And I do, I recommend to people you should always be reading something and don't just read something relevant to your specific job. Just read something that's interesting that could give you a new way of seeing the world.

Yeah, it's a means of cultivating analogous thinking. Right. Like the best ideas I find for my business are the ones from outside my industry. Almost always. The best analogies are always from some other realm. That's really wise. Nona, I'm curious, what does your day look like from the moment you wake up to the moment you go to bed? What's the TikTok of Nona's day?

Well, I will give you the bookends of my day that are pretty consistent. And then the middle gets muddy. So I typically will wake up anywhere from 6:30 to 7, depends on the day. But I always start my day working out. So maybe that's going for a five mile run outside. Or I might get on my elliptical for 45 minutes. And then from there I spend time in prayer and study. I try to take an hour to start my day in the word of God and praying and meditating and repenting and whatever it is I really need to do before the Lord. And then after that I really look at my calendar. I do that before I go to bed at night too. But I look at it again, make sure I'm clear on what's. What's going on in my day. Just so you know, the night before is super important for me because I look at my day and I also make notes. If you were to look at my calendar, you would see there is no White space. Every single minute of my day has a name that's on purpose so that I can make sure that I'm actually making progress. But yeah, I take a look to see what's going on with my day, just make sure that I don't have any overnight pings changing my day, which usually happens. And then from there I'm usually in meetings with our product team or perhaps my team as well. And I have a couple of businesses as well, so I'm also sometimes fielding conversations with staff on those entities. And then sometimes I'm also working on whether it's a sermon because my husband and I pastor a church, so I might be working on a sermon that day. And I have two little boys, so I'm also dealing with things to get them prepared for school or helping with their homework. So every, every day is different, especially in the middle. Now I end my day with a workout as well. So I work out twice a day. The reason for that is, you know, just to release the stress. I find that when I work out that second time, whatever, you know, I have pent up frustration, anxiety, the endorphins help to calm that down. And then after that it's, it's just time for dinner and family and then reading and trying to get my mind calm for the night.

So I love that you name every minute of your day. I do the same thing. I am curious though, you said there's no white space on your calendar. I'm curious if you budget time for breaks, if you budget time to just take a walk around the office or walk around outside and clear your mind.

Yeah, that's on my calendar. So like what I. Yeah, I love it. What I've come to realize is if it's not on the calendar, it will not happen. So I do, I put on my calendar, sometimes I'll have like a 15 minute stretch break. I also budget on my calendar, just what I call reflection time. I try to, if I can. It doesn't always work this way, especially when seasons get busy. But I try to reserve my mornings for the kind of focused work time. So typically before noon, that's when I have like my work blocks, which works out well because my team is on civic time. And so, you know, they're, they're mostly sleeping and getting ready for the day. Then between noon and one, I will either try to grab lunch or I'll start catching up on emails again. And then, yeah, from 1 until about 5, 5:30, sometimes 6, I'm in meetings. I try to, because I only do 30 minute meetings. And so I typically will do usually like three or four 30 minute meetings. And between those meetings I try to have reflection time so I can make sure that after the meeting I'm actually contemplating what we discussed and what needs to happen next versus going from meeting to meeting to meeting to meeting to meeting. So I try to budget that. It's not perfect, but I try.

Yeah, that's good advice. I like that a lot. So you're a super goal oriented person, I gotta imagine, right? You got so much going on Facebook with your writing, speaking, raising a family, running half marathons. I'm curious, do you set personal goals outside of your role at Facebook? So Facebook, maybe you guys have OKRs or KPIs, whatever. In your personal life, do you have goals for you and your family?

Oh, absolutely. Yeah, I have goals for my health, I have goals for my children. Goals? Yeah, goals all over the place. But I try to make them as reasonable as possible. So I want them to be stretch goals, but I want them to also fit within my lifestyle. So yeah, I have goals. Like right now, one of the things I'm working on is between now and the end of the year, I want to get my ACE certification, which is essentially a exercise science program. Because as part of me wanting to be healthier because I tend to be a study type person, I figured one of the best ways for me to do that is to actually get a, an ACE designation, which is a certified personal trainer. I don't plan to be a personal trainer, but it's like, hey, why not go through the program so I'll understand.

It'S a good objective measure of what you want to try to accomplish. I love that. Yeah, I'm a big fan of so I love Google's OKR framework and I'm a big fan of personal okrs too. Right. Making sure you're having personal objectives and key results. So, Nona, we spend a lot of time in this podcast talking about the role that our guests faith plays into their work, how their faith influences their work. I'm curious for you what role you think your faith plays specifically in your ambition for your work and your pursuit of vocational excellence. Do you connect those things?

Oh, absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. The way that I think of my faith is my faith is actually not. It's not something that is separate from me. My faith is my identity. And in so many ways I don't compartmentalize my faith because it's who I am. I take my faith with me everywhere that I go. I think people At Facebook, they even know, like, I'm a person of faith. So I've had people who are atheists, who are agnostic, actually ask me to pray for them or just tell me something that's troubling them, because they know that I will be a person who will encourage them, and I'll always try to point them to God. So, yeah, it's who I am. It's not something that I separate. It's not something that I kind of lay outside of my office. I think it's part of my identity. And I really pray. That's my prayer every morning, that I will take God everywhere that I go, that he will go before me, and people will see him in everything I do.

Yeah, and you spread the aroma of Christmas or wherever you are. So I was reading in your story that for understandable reasons that we've already talked about, when you were a kid, you basically tried to make yourself invisible. You're like, hey, I'm just gonna hide myself. And, you know, I think it's ironic because one of the biggest temptations of our age, largely fueled by your employer, is to use our work to make ourselves visible. Right? We make ourselves look important, and we look to that visibility to provide something that really only Christ can provide. Right. This ultimate sense of self worth. So you're a very public, very visible personality. I'm curious, how do you fight that temptation not to place your worth in your relative visibility and accomplishments?

Well, I will tell you, it hasn't always been that way. There were many times throughout my career that I was very much so concerned about what I accomplished. I was concerned about what people thought of me. I was very concerned about being the best. And that. That's just exhausting. It's exhausting. But I think part of my healing journey really was what helped me to see, you know, you can accumulate all of the things, the titles, the positions, the money, the cars. You can accumulate all of that and still feel empty, still feel hopeless and worthless. And so that's part of the reason why I wrote the book, because I discovered that success is not something you accumulate. It's something that you. You discover and you. Something that you find in yourself and in God. So, yeah, I. I did all that. All that stuff. And I think partly what I discovered, too, is that the reason why I was. I was so successful at an early age is because there was a lot of insecurities within me that really were outgrowths from the abuse I sustained as a child and from being told that I was not wanted I've also found that many of the most successful, successful people similarly experienced a lot of rejection and neglect. And sometimes that becomes the fuel that really motivates success. So what I'm trying to do, even with this, this book in my, my ministry, in my life, I'm trying to help people discover good success. You know, not the kind of success that empties, but the kind that fills.

It's kind of alarming how common it is in the stories of some of the most successful, especially entrepreneurs in the world. There's some real tragedy and trauma in their childh.

Right.

You see this with Elon Musk, with Jobs, you see it with Bezos. It's kind of alarming. It's crystal clear, I think, to our listeners how your specific role in the work you do contributes to God's mission in the world. Right. You're a minister, you're working at Facebook, helping equip the church with these tools. What about the other 50,000 employees of Facebook? Are the millions of other people all around the world doing jobs as computer programmers and doctors and lawyers, some of them listening right now who are doing work that's not overtly evangelical. What would you say to them as a minister about the eternal significance of their work?

Oh, my goodness. Well, so one thing I saw, I was, I was reading through the book of Genesis and I was reading in particular about the assignment that God gave to Adam and Eve. It was interesting. He told them essentially to rule and subdue the territory that he gave to them. And I saw that and I thought that was really interesting. And I thought that that was something that God was really saying, speaking to all of us as Christians, that no matter what our vocation is, I mean, in that sense, their vocation was as the garden keepers, you know, and some instances as the zookeepers, you know, no matter what our vocation is, God doesn't just give us a job. He gives us territory. He gives us a domain where we are supposed to live out our faith, where we're supposed to represent Him. We are supposed to be the ones that take care of that place. And so I would say that no matter what you do, you are called to ministry in that place. If you are a trash collector, your territory really includes protecting the environment. That is something that God has called you to do. If you are a doctor, the territory that God has given you is, is the health and the well being of the patients that God has placed in your care. If you're a banker, the territory God has given you is one to protect people's. Resources and multiply resources so that they can do more in the world. So you have to learn to see your job not as a job but as an assignment from God. Which is why even when you ask me to describe what I do, I always describe it in the language of my assignment. Because my job description says one thing. My job description says nothing about ministry. It says nothing about discipleship. But I know that this is why God called me to the role I'm in.

Amen. Very well said. So, Nona, three questions we'd love to wrap up every conversation with. Number one, which books on the whole do you tend to recommend or gift most frequently to others?

One book that I am like the fan of the world for is a book called essentialism by Greg McKeon. Such a great book. I try to read this book annually because it really helps to just reground me. It's both an asset and a liability. One of my assets and liabilities is that I'm very, very curious and I have a lot of interests. And what that means is I will create stuff and launch stuff and do new stuff when I really don't have the time. But because I'm so interested in it and I'm like, yeah, let's just do it. And. And so Essentialism helps me return back to the reality that. Wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute. Is this something that's actually pointing me to the best and highest purpose for which God created me? Or is this just something that I'm doing because it's nice to do? So Essentialism is absolutely one another really great one. A book that I love to read is it's called Approval Addiction and it's by Joyce Meyer. It's a book that I have to read personally because as someone who grew up in an environment where, as I said earlier, I was told I wasn't wanted, you can kind of, no matter how successful you are, you can kind of create this need, this insatiable need for approval from people. And so that book really helped me to gain a sense of healthy perspective in my mind and also in the way that I interact with other people.

Those are really good. Who would you most like to hear? Maybe on this podcast, but just in general, talking about how their faith influences the work they're doing 40, 50 hours a week in the world.

Someone who I work with and admire is Sheryl Sandberg. I think she really has just a great story. It's certainly tragic in that she lost her husband very, very unexpectedly. And you know, at that Point. I mean, my goodness, she was at the top of whatever game anyone could imagine, you know, I mean, named, you know, one of the hundred most powerful people by Time magazine and just doing all these incredible things. And here she suffers this incredible loss. And one of the things that she has said several times is that it was her faith. That really helps to get her through that.

That's a good answer. I'm a big fan of Cheryl's. Yeah. Last question. One piece of advice. To leave this audience with this audience of Christ followers in a bunch of different vocations who just care really deeply about doing good work for the glory of God and the good of others. What do you want to leave them with?

Our charge is not to make our name great. Our charge is to make the name of Jesus great. And so I think we have to walk into every situation with that in mind. What I have found across my career is there will be so many people who, especially if you have talent, who will try to lull you into this idea that you are amazing and you are great and you're the best thing since sliced bread. But the Bible tells us that pride comes before a fall. And so I want people to maintain a sense of humility and recognize that everything that we have, everything that we are, is a gift from God's hand. And so if you have that mentality, no matter what your vocation may be, God will be able to use you. He'll be able to advance you because he'll be able to trust you. And I think that's the differentiator. We should not necessarily strive to be famous. We should strive to be trustworthy by God. If he can trust us, he will elevate us. But our aim should be to make him pleased, no?

And I want to commend you for the just, important and eternally significant work you're doing every day throughout your entire career. Thank you for your passion for making Jesus famous and for your commitment to the ministry of excellence. Hey. Nona released two books this year, guys. From Social Media to Social Ministry and Success from the Inside Out. You can easily find those wherever books are sold. And you can find Nona at the best Facebook URL of all time, facebook.com nona. Not Nora, not Nora Jones. Very clear on that. Nona, thank you so much for being with us.

Oh, thank you for having me. This has been such a pleasure.

I hope you guys enjoyed that conversation. If you're enjoying the Call to Mastery, make sure you subscribe so you never miss an episode in the future. And if you are already subscribed. Do me a favor, take 30 seconds right now and go leave a review of the podcast. Thank you guys so much for listening. I'll see you next week.