Jo previously was the Associate Director for the social enterprise sector and international lead for the Career Development Office at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College, USA. She also was an Adjunct Professor at Granite State College and taught a Business Management course ‘Effecting Positive Change in Organizations’.
Prior to academia, Jo started in the graphic arts paper manufacturing industry in corporate sales and marketing. After five years, she changed her focus to social enterprises and worked for the United States Peace Corps in the Eastern Caribbean as a Small Business Development Trainer and Counsellor for a rural agricultural development NGO and was the elected Lead Volunteer for a group of 19 Peace Corps Volunteers in Antigua and Barbuda.
She holds an MRes from The Open University, Faculty of Business and Law, an International MBA from Escuela de Alta Dirección y Administración (EADA) in Barcelona, Spain, and BSc in Business Administration from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She completed an apprenticeship with the United Nations International Trade Centre in Geneva, Switzerland, and United Nations Industrial Development Organisastion in Vienna, Austria. She holds a Professional Coaching Certification and also created the Professional Coaching Portal for the non-profit organization MERLOT (Multimedia Educational Resource for Learning and Online Teaching).
Jo's current research is an organisational ethnography of Yarl's Wood Befrienders, a voluntary organisation that visits women migrants and asylum seekers detained in Yarl’s Wood Immigration Removal Centre in Bedfordshire, England. She is a full member of the organisation she is studying, as a volunteer, befriender to detainees and a trustee on the Board of Directors responsible for fundraising. Her study furthers our knowledge of compassionate practices and emotion management in volunteer work, compassionate organisations and the voluntary sector support for immigration detainees, a marginalised and vulnerable group in society.