By John Howell Sr.

The speaker at today’s graduation of Batesville Job Corps Center students will be celebrating both their matriculation and the 30th anniversary of Minact, the corporation he founded 30 years ago.

The graduation is described as a “Summer Career Transition Period Graduation” by BJCC spokesman Pam Norwood. It will be held in the auditorium of the Batesville Junior High School, starting at 2 p.m. There will be a reception immediately afterwards at the BJCC Recreation Center.

Booker T. Jones began his career with Job Corps in 1966 as a resident advisor at a Morganfield, Kentucky center. He quickly moved through the ranks to become center director at a Mississippi center. In 1978, he founded Minact, Inc., a Mississippi corporation, and successfully competed for his first contract to operate a Job Corps center.

Today, Minact operates seven centers located in Louisiana, Michigan, Missouri, North Dakota, and Tennessee in addition to the Batesville Job Corps Center.

A graduate of Indiana State University in Evansville, Indiana, Jones serves on the boards of Bancorp South Bank Community Board, Momentum Mississippi, The Children’s Health Forum, and the advisory board of the College of Business at Jackson State University.

The Minact founder has been appointed by the Secretary of Labor to serve on the Federal Job Corps Advisory Committee, of which he is now chairman.

In 2007, he was inducted into the Mississippi Business Hall of Fame.