About

Dee Jones, MBA

Founder and Senior Strategic Advisor

Dee is a career strategic operations leader across manufacturing, software, cable, and North Carolina state government, in growing leadership roles for more than twenty-five years. She founded DCJ Strategic Consulting to help businesses, state agencies, and associations work together and solve problems: sorting through complexity, opening the right doors, and getting things done efficiently.

The work is personal and tailored, never canned. She uses AI to accelerate research, then verifies every name and detail by hand.

Dee and her family have lived in the Cary, NC area for 25 years. She and her husband have been married for 35 years; their son, an NC State graduate, is in graduate school pursuing a JD/MBA. Off the clock she travels, volunteers, follows sports of all kinds, reads, and walks their two spoiled dogs.

Executive record

The seats she has held

NC State Health Plan

Executive Administrator. Led the state health benefit plan covering roughly 750,000 teachers, state employees, retirees, and dependents at roughly $4 billion a year, governed by a 10-member Board of Trustees. Implemented reference-based pricing across the independent provider community and a shared-savings strategy for independent primary care.

NC DHHS, Division of Health Benefits

Chief Operating Officer. Stood up the legislatively mandated Medicaid reform division and designed the functional structure of a $14 billion NC Medicaid Division with a team of 200. Delivered the Section 1115 waiver application to CMS on budget and on deadline, in a reform covering roughly 1.9 million residents.

NC Department of Administration

Chief Operating Officer. Led operations and advocacy divisions for a state agency with a $100 million budget and a staff of 200. Developed and implemented the mandated $10 million NC Eugenics Compensation Program and a strategic-sourcing initiative that saved more than 10 percent across targeted spending categories.

Time Warner Cable, 2001 to 2012

Senior operations, real estate, and finance leadership. Managed two million square feet across the Carolinas and built two operating facilities, including a 160,000-square-foot LEED Silver office building delivered on time and on budget as owner project manager, for a division serving 500,000 customers.

Recent bridging roles: advisor to the Director of the NC Office of State Human Resources (2024 to 2025) and Director of Business Development and Consulting Services, State Government, at CGI (2023 to 2024). Earlier, colleagues credit her with turning around warehouse and distribution operations across five Southeast warehouses at MediaOne and AT&T Broadband, including a consolidation and a new ERP implementation.

Board portfolio

Governance, held from the inside

Governance leadership

Advance Community Health (a Federally Qualified Health Center): Board of Trustees, Governance Committee Chair, Finance Committee member, 2023 to 2024.
Designed For Joy: Advisory Board and Governance Committee, 2022 to 2023.

Current health-policy seats

NC Community Care Networks (N3CN): Board Member since 2025; Board Chair since June 2026.
National Institute for Public Employee Health Care Policy: Board Member, 2024 to present.
Community Care of North Carolina: Board Member and Finance Committee Member, 2024 to present.

Institutional standing

NC Institute of Medicine: Member, 2019 to present.
Public Sector HealthCare Roundtable: Member since 2017; Board Member, 2019 to 2022.

Long-tenured leadership

Women in Cable Telecommunications (Carolinas): President, Committee Chair, and Board Member across sixteen years, 1997 to 2013.
Cary IMP Club (Cary High athletic boosters): President and Treasurer, 2016 to 2021. She rewrote the bylaws and governance policies, documented that ninety-five percent of funds went back to student-athlete programs, and modernized fundraising operations.

Published

In print, on the themes she works

Two bylined, invited commentaries in the North Carolina Medical Journal, published by the NC Institute of Medicine.

“The North Carolina State Health Plan for Teachers and State Employees: Strategies in Creating Financial Stability While Improving Member Health.”

Dee Jones and Beth Horner. N.C. Med. J. 2018;79(1):56–61. Byline title: Executive Administrator.

“North Carolina Medicaid Reform: Seizing Opportunities and Addressing Challenges.”

Dee Jones, Julia K. Lerche, and Julia A. Schoenberger. N.C. Med. J. 2017;78(1):33–37. Byline title: former Chief Operating Officer, Division of Health Benefits.

Speaking

Invited, on the record, since 2008

More than twenty invited talks, panels, and committee presentations across three arenas: North Carolina legislative and oversight committees, where she briefed the bodies that hold the budgets on programs she built; the CalPERS Academy, which has invited her three times (2021, 2022, 2025) to speak on health-benefit strategy; and health-policy conferences and university classrooms on Medicaid reform, the State Health Plan, and value-based care. Most recently: the 2026 i2i Winter Conference on the future of Tailored Plans, and panel moderator at the 2025 Public Sector Roundtable Conference.