Deputy Director of Enforcement Nekia Hackworth Jones Concludes Her Tenure at the SEC

The Deputy Director of the SEC’s Division of Enforcement (Southeast) is a senior enforcement leader who:

• Oversees and supervises the SEC’s enforcement investigations and court cases handled out of the Washington, D.C., Atlanta, and Miami offices.
• Directs teams of attorneys, accountants, and other staff investigating potential violations of the federal securities laws and bringing civil enforcement actions.
• Helps set enforcement priorities and ensure consistent application of SEC rules across the Southeast region (and the DC “home office”) as part of the Division of Enforcement’s nationwide mandate to investigate and prosecute securities-law violations. These responsibilities are described in public bios of the role and in general descriptions of the SEC’s Division of Enforcement mandate.

As of the information available in the December 29, 2025 press release and related public materials, the SEC had not announced who would replace Nekia Hackworth Jones as Deputy Director of Enforcement (Southeast) or who would serve in an acting capacity, and no successor was named in those documents.

The SEC’s December 29, 2025 press release (as reproduced by Newsfile and other sites) includes brief statements praising Nekia Hackworth Jones’s service but does not give a specific reason for her departure. It does not describe it as a retirement, resignation to take another job, or otherwise explain why she left; it only notes that she concluded her tenure on December 26, 2025.

Public materials about Nekia Hackworth Jones’s SEC service highlight her leadership roles but do not list a definitive “signature” case from her brief tenure as Deputy Director (Southeast). As Atlanta Regional Director, she oversaw numerous enforcement matters, including complex fraud and market‑abuse actions, and publicly spoke for the SEC in cases such as:

• An international market‑manipulation scheme involving hacked accounts and U.S.-listed securities, where she is quoted as Atlanta Regional Office Director in an August 2022 SEC release. However, available sources do not clearly attribute a specific, named major enforcement initiative solely to her leadership as Deputy Director (Southeast).

Neither the SEC’s December 29, 2025 press release nor other publicly available official biographies state why Nekia Hackworth Jones left the SEC—there is no indication in those documents whether she departed to take another job, to retire, or for some other reason. Based on currently available information, the reason for her departure has not been publicly disclosed.

The SEC has not publicly indicated that Nekia Hackworth Jones’s departure will change or halt ongoing enforcement actions in the Southeast region. In this role she supervised investigations and litigation across the Washington, D.C., Atlanta, and Miami offices, but those matters are handled by teams and the broader Division of Enforcement, which continues its work under other senior leaders. Historically, when SEC regional or deputy leaders depart, ongoing cases proceed under new or interim leadership with no public indication of being dropped solely because of a personnel change; there is no evidence in the December 29, 2025 announcement suggesting otherwise here.