WHO WE ARE

James Davis is the founder and President of Touchdown Strategies, a communications and marketing firm in Washington DC. Davis has advised major corporations, family businesses, NGOs, and government and philanthropic leaders around the world on communications, crisis management, marketing, brand development, legislative affairs and more.

Prior to founding Touchdown Strategies, Davis spent seven years as a senior communications executive with the high-profile philanthropic Stand Together community. During his tenure there, he led teams to advance major advocacy campaigns that helped achieve once-in-a-generation cross-partisan policy wins, including veterans’ healthcare, and criminal justice and federal tax reforms.

Over the course of his career, Davis has helped shape the narratives around some of the most notable events in the world. He served as a key advisor to BP during the 2010 “Deepwater Horizon” response and recovery, spearheaded communications for the Pentagon under Secretaries of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and Robert Gates, served as communications director for the 2012 Republican National Convention, and guided a nationwide campaign to help neighbors reduce poverty and addiction, among many other noteworthy achievements. Davis’ thoughtful approach has credited him with numerous awards and accolades, including PRWeek’s 40 Under 40 and Campaign and Elections Rising Stars.

Former US Representative Artur Davis is an employment law attorney in HKM’s Atlanta office, where he represents employees facing discrimination in the workplace.

Davis’ decade long political career enabled him to advance the interests of workers on several policy fronts including sponsorship of the Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, which expanded the rights of women to equitable pay, and advocacy for legislation to strengthen the rights of veterans and reservists seeking to reclaim their civilian jobs after serving our country. Prior to his time in elected office, he earned a reputation as a dynamic and creative attorney for employees forced to endure race and sex discrimination. Davis proved he could achieve successful results even in the most challenging cases, drawing on his extensive experience as a federal prosecutor and criminal defense lawyer to tell his client’s stories.

Davis is an honors graduate of Harvard Law School, where he was the second African American to win the award of Best Oral Advocate in the Ames Moot Court Competition.

Adam Weiss is a public affairs and political campaign strategist and the managing partner of FIO360, a public affairs consultancy. He combines a granular understanding of how Washington works with experience working on campaigns across America. For more than 15 years, Weiss has advised associations, labor unions, political candidates, party committees, government agencies, a global media company, and Fortune 500 companies.

Weiss’ inside and outside the beltway experiences have given him a distinct perspective and deep skill set for quickly identifying problems and executing solutions in complex political and business environments. He engages challenges with a political operative’s eye and a healthy skepticism of inside the beltway conventional wisdom. He specializes in adding strategic capacity and creating alignment strategies and campaigns that maximize the impact of earned media, government relations and paid media efforts to amplify the work clients are doing to advance their agenda.

Before launching FIO360, Weiss held several high-impact positions at a leading global media and entertainment company where he advised associations, government agencies, corporate clients, campaign committees, and political candidates to effectively deliver their messages to the right audiences. In addition to his campaign work, Weiss has run political action programs at leading progressive organizations and served in a senior role at the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.

Ja’Ron Smith is currently the Executive Director of the Center for Advancing Opportunity, which aims to move people living in fragile communities from promise to prosperity by developing research-based solutions to pressing issues such as education, entrepreneurship, criminal justice and overall economic conditions. For years, Smith has been a champion of pushing for policies that create positive change for forgotten Americans and deliver tangible results for impoverished communities. Prior to CAO, Smith was President Trump’s highest and longest ranking African-American advisor and served in the White House in many different roles. Most recently, he served as Deputy Assistant to the President for Domestic Policy and Deputy Director of the White House Office of American Innovation.

Smith played a key role in developing President Trump’s policies and has been a driving force in passing legislation aimed at helping the African American community. He was instrumental in passing the criminal justice reform bill that freed thousands of African Americans and reunited people with their families, helped give historically black colleges and universities the highest level of presidential funding they’ve received in 20 years, advocated for boosting the opportunity zone program that revitalized many minority and low-income communities, and also focused on aiding minority businesses impacted by COVID-19 and was behind the President’s recent executive order regarding law enforcement and use of force in America. Smith’s portfolio during his time at the White House included a wide range of other issues, including immigration, re-entry, economic revitalization of distressed communities, infrastructure, trade, economic growth and job creation, and more.

He previously served as a Special Assistant to the President for Legislative Affairs and was the President’s liaison to the United States House of Representatives Ways and Means Committee, Agriculture Committee, Education and Workforce Committee, Homeland Security Committee, Congressional Black Caucus, and Congressional Hispanic Caucus. Prior to serving as the Special Assistant to the President in the Office of Legislative Affairs, Smith served as the President’s Director of Urban Affairs and Revitalization, where he was a chief policy strategist and manager of HBCU initiatives, crime and reentry, and the White House Faith and Opportunity Initiative. Before the President began his term in office, Smith also served Congressmen J.C. Watts, Steve Scalise, Jim Jordan, Jeb Hensarling, along with Senator Tim Scott and prior Chairman and Governor Mike Pence.

As evidenced by his personal and professional commitments, Smith has been a longtime advocate for economic development, crime prevention, entrepreneurship, and workforce development. Smith was recently awarded the 2020 Bipartisan Justice Award.

Smith is a graduate of Howard University School of Business and Howard University School of Divinity.

Jonathan Mason is living out his dream as CEO and Founder of Jentry Search Academy, a transitional education support agency that trains professional athletes and MBA graduates to acquire and operate small businesses in opportunity zones across the United States.

Mason was born in Prince George’s County to Entrepreneur Father, Theodore Mason and Circuit Court Judge Mother, Karen Mason. Following his sister, Nicole Mason, he headed to the Washington Catholic Athletic Conference where he would attend DeMatha Catholic High School. Mason would garner a 4.1 GPA, All-Conference, All-State, and All-Metropolitan honors—to go along with being President of the National Honors Society, before leaving DeMatha to play football at Harvard University and study Sociology, with a minor concentration in African-American Studies.

While at Harvard, Mason supplemented his degree with work in a number of roles in education, including Harvard's tutoring programs domestically and abroad in Africa as well as a consulting role under a professor at Harvard Business School. He also founded the sports marketing group, People of the Crimson. Mason was a three-year starter on the Harvard Varsity football team. As a footballer, Mason was elected to the Leadership Council and won the 2012 Buz Crain, the 2012 Henry N. Lamar, and the 2013 John P. Fadden awards. The 2010 Bleed-to-Win recipient, Mason earned a reputation as one of the hardest hitting safeties in the Ivy League before 11 knee surgeries led him to JPMorgan rather than the NFL.

In 2012, Mason worked at JPMorgan Chase as an equities sales trader where he helped launch JP Morgan’s career prep program with the Harlem Children Zone, along with founding the Harvard Athlete Recruitment Initiative with Harvard’s Varsity Club to recruit student athletes. At JPMorgan, Mason took pride in continuing to support education access and athletes. Since 2013, he has served as Rodney McLeod Jr.'s (Super Bowl champion and captain of the Philadelphia Eagles) business manager. Mason would even go on to further his athletic pursuits in professional life by pairing up with JPMorgan colleagues to win the Wall Street Decathlon.

Mason left JPMorgan for the buy side, first as a trader and then as the founder of the investment advisory platform Temprince Holdings—named after his beloved late father and Prince George’s County—that manages assets for family offices and ultra-high-net worth individuals. Mason runs Temprince Trading, the public equity trading arm of Temprince, with the support of Bank of America, JPMorgan, and Goldman Sachs. In recent years, the strategy shifted from Tech to ESG while participating in major IPO and Secondaries including Lyft, Uber, and Beyond Meat.

In 2017, Mason partnered with Rodney McLeod Jr. to found Back of House USA, a progressive Men’s Streetwear clothing boutique in Arlington, Virginia. Mason saw the struggles and opportunities of Main Street, including government shutdowns, shifting to online-only during COVID-19, and managing a team from varying backgrounds. He decided to better support his team by attending Harvard Business School. Mason was a member of HBS’s Section G and participated in many programs including panels, campus tours, and school visits increasing the access of Harvard to the communities nearest to his heart. After his first year, Mason applied for the Harvard Rock Center for Entrepreneurship Summer Fellowship where he laid the foundation of Jentry. Since then, Mason has pursued his passion of using capital and influence to help empower underserved communities.