EDUCATION

Young leader J.D. Baker making mark on Oklahoma City

Tim Willert

It was a bold move, but the decision to ask Oklahoma City Mayor David Holt out to lunch paid off for J.D. Baker.

Holt was so impressed with Baker that he offered the 23-year-old University of Oklahoma graduate an internship and within a month had created the position of special assistant.

"Were a pretty small operation," Holt said. "We had two people and J.D. made three. He started as a paid intern. Pretty quickly I was concerned by the caliber of people who were asking him to lunch. I said this needs to turn into a real job or we're going to lose him."

Baker seems to have that effect on people.

"He's a remarkable young man," Holt said. "He certainly knows his way around diplomacy and public service. Probably what’s most impressive about J.D. is his network; he knows everybody."

Holt joked, "I've had governors walk past me to get to J.D."

Baker is considering a career in either public administration or politics.

"I wanted to work for a good leader, and I wanted to be engaged with the community," he said. "I’ve always been engaged. I’ve always wanted to create solutions for people."

As a senior at Edmond Santa Fe High School, Baker was voted Mr. Santa Fe. As a junior at OU, he was elected student body president.

It didn't take long to make his mark at OU, where he was a member of the President's Leadership Class as a freshman.

"He separated himself from the outset as a really engaging personality and someone that people are really drawn to," said Clarke Stroud, then the university's dean of students. "He has a unique way of engaging people. He doesn’t make it about him, so people are interested in talking to him because he doesn’t try to bring the conversation back to himself. He is genuinely curious and concerned for others."

After a student threatened to jump off a building during Baker's first semester at OU, Baker decided to find out what services were available for students in distress. He helped organize the student group OUr Mental Health, which quickly grew from 18 members to 50.

"That became something that was really important to him," recalled Stroud, now OU's director of football operations.

"He rallied student government leaders and resources. It wasn’t just talk; they worked within the student activity fee to find more money to increase mental health support … and make that something that our student government made a top priority."

That same semester, Baker's class attendance and quality of work declined to the point that a professor reported it. Baker realized he had been dealing with depression since his junior year of high school. He later was diagnosed with bipolar disorder.

"That’s what made it ironic," he said. "I was telling everyone else to be aware of it, and I wasn’t aware myself."

Shaped by Family and Church

Baker said serving as student body president taught him the value of teamwork.

"I made plenty of mistakes, but it made me realize the importance of relationships and friendships and alliances," he said. "When you’re trying to reach a goal, it’s much easier when you have team players, when you have an army right with you. You want to make sure you have good relationships with everyone, and everyone is aligned toward the same goal."

Family and church have shaped Baker, who was a youth announcer for a church radio program. For seven years on Saturday mornings, he would perform alongside his grandmother, Geraldine M. Downey, who also had a speaking role on the program.

"That’s kind of where I got my start when it came to public speaking," he said. "I loved it. It taught me a lot. To be able to stand at the feet of my pastor every Saturday morning, to hear him give (a) sermon on the radio, it really impacted me."

For Baker, church is more than a religious ceremony.

"It's a community gathering. It's where you see in the Civil Rights movement, it's where everyone met," he said. "It's where they met before they marched over to Katz’s Drug Store.

"It's place of activism, it’s a place of hope, it’s a place of family and community. The church for African-Americans is always more than just, quite simply, church.

Baker has a twin brother, two older brothers and an older sister. Parents Jack and Davie have been married for 31 years. Jack recently retired after nearly 29 years as an Oklahoma City firefighter. Both older brothers are firefighters.

"I was meant to use my brains, not my muscle," Baker said.

The parents are business owners in Edmond.

Growing up, his father always told him to "be good, do good."

Davie described her son as self-motivated and hard-working, a real "go-getter."

"He can just talk to anybody and they’ll listen," she said.

J.D. Baker, shown on the roof of the Oklahoma City Museum of Art, works as special assistant to Oklahoma City Mayor David Holt. Baker made mental health awareness a priority while he was a student at OU, including during his time as student body president. [Chris Landsberger, The Oklahoman]