Alonzo Jones '03

Despite growing up just a few blocks away from the Prep, Alonzo Jones ’03 didn’t know anything about the school until he was in 7th grade. “I was in Gospel choir practice one day, and the choir director pulled me aside to introduce me to someone.” Jones remembers. That someone was HL Ratliff ’78, the head of the Prep’s African American Alumni Association (A4). Ratliff encouraged Jones to attend the Prep’s Pre-8th summer program and, for Jones, the rest was history.

 

“Pre-8th was one of the best times of my life,” Jones says. “After that summer, I told my parents that this was where I needed to go to high school.” Jones applied quickly thereafter and was accepted to the Prep as a member of the Class of 2003.

 

“They were the best four years of my life, I truly mean that,” says Jones. “I didn’t realize as a student what type of family and network I was now a part of. I meet Prep people all over the city, and I can always stick my chest out and be proud that I’m a Prep grad.”

 

Something that helped Jones feel comfortable quickly at 17th and Girard was the impact of the Prep’s A4. Immediately after he was accepted to the Prep, Jones received a phone call from a member of the A4 welcoming him to the brotherhood. “It meant so much to me to go from not knowing anyone to now knowing 20 people, and 20 people who looked like me,” Jones recalls. “Being able to be myself from day one was important, and I owe that all to the A4.”

 

It was this impact from the A4 that made Jones want to take a larger role in getting the group back on its feet in recent years. “I want to give back what was given to me. I owe it to all the guys after to make sure they have the same positive experience that I had.” 

 

Jones and other Prep alumni of color connected with Anthony Bush, the Prep’s Director of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, to work with him on the A4 and other initiatives like the Alumni for Allyship program. “The impetus for us is to continue to give the students of color an outlet and resource of people who look like them and have been through those walls.”

 

While Jones offers a great deal of his time and talent to the Prep, many may know him from his local celebrity status on Twitter where he tweets, mostly about the 76ers, from the account “@Tweets_By_Zo.” Jones’ Twitter account lights up in and around Sixers games, and he has developed quite a large following in the basketball community.

 

“I only created a Twitter account for a graduate school class I was in at West Chester University,” says Jones. “I let the account sit for a few years before I started to tweet again because I wanted to talk about the Process Sixers.” 

 

After tweeting out some funny replies to established Sixers media figures like Spike Eskin and Michael Levin, Jones started to gain a bit of a following. Ironically, his Twitter really started to take off during the Eagles’ Super Bowl run in 2017-18 in a tweet that had nothing to do with the Sixers. Jones now has close to 10,000 people following his takes on the Eastern Conference’s current one seed.

 

It was his popularity among Sixers fans that led Howie Brown ’99, Director of Admissions at the Prep and the moderator of the Prep’s “Trust the Process Club”, to reach out and invite Jones back to speak with the club, showing just another example of Jones’ commitment to the students at the Prep.

 

Giving of his time to the Prep and maintaining his Twitter account are just side projects for Jones, who is currently the Digital Marketing Manager for Arcadia University, where he received a master’s degree in Public Relations. Prior to Arcadia University, Jones received a bachelor's degree in Communications and Media Arts from Neumann University. 

 

More importantly, however, Jones and his wife Shana are the proud parents of two-year-old Amari and are expecting a baby girl this summer. The couple recently moved to Drexel Hill, marking Jones’ first time living outside of North Philadelphia and outside of the shadow of Mother Prep.

 

While most of Zo’s Twitter followers come for his Sixers thoughts, he’s not afraid to tweet about his love and respect for the Prep, often sharing a photo of the Church of the Gesu whenever he walks by. “I think I’m the Prep’s biggest ambassador, and I’m gonna let people know! After all these years, I feel like I’ve never left.”