Jones is a lawyer and social activist who, in 2009, was appointed as a Special Advisor to the Council on Environmental Quality by the Obama administration. He served in this role until resigning under pressure from conservative media pundits over public remarks he had made several years earlier. He joined CNN as a political commentator in 2013, and the SXSW session in 2017 was to help promote his newly launched CNN show, which was also called The Messy Truth with Van Jones.