Jo Ann Jenkins (born February 8, 1958) is the CEO of
AARP
AARP (formerly called the American Association of Retired Persons) is an interest group in the United States focusing on issues affecting those over the age of fifty. The organization said it had more than 38 million members in 2018. The magazin ...
.
She was appointed on September 1, 2014, having previously served as chief operating officer from 2013 to 2014.
Between 1994 and 2010, she was a senior adviser, chief of staff, and chief operating officer of the
Library of Congress
The Library of Congress (LOC) is the research library that officially serves the United States Congress and is the ''de facto'' national library of the United States. It is the oldest federal cultural institution in the country. The library is ...
.
Education and early career
A native of
Mon Louis Island,
Alabama
(We dare defend our rights)
, anthem = "Alabama (state song), Alabama"
, image_map = Alabama in United States.svg
, seat = Montgomery, Alabama, Montgomery
, LargestCity = Huntsville, Alabama, Huntsville
, LargestCounty = Baldwin County, Al ...
, Jenkins graduated from Theodore High School in
Theodore, Alabama
Theodore is an unincorporated area and census-designated place (CDP) in Mobile County, Alabama, Mobile County, Alabama, United States. The population was 6,270 at the 2020 United States census, 2020 census. It is a part of the Mobile metropolitan ...
, in 1976 and went on to attend
Spring Hill College where she majored in Political Science.
After graduating from Spring Hill College in 1980, she became a voter outreach worker on
Ronald Reagan's 1980 Presidential Campaign.
Following the campaign in 1981 she began working as an executive assistant at the
U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development
The United States Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) is one of the executive departments of the U.S. federal government. It administers federal housing and urban development laws. It is headed by the Secretary of Housing and Urb ...
and later moved to the
U.S. Department of Transportation
The United States Department of Transportation (USDOT or DOT) is one of the executive departments of the U.S. federal government. It is headed by the secretary of transportation, who reports directly to the President of the United States and ...
(DOT), where she served as special assistant to Secretary of Transportation
Elizabeth Dole from 1985 to 1987.
In this role Jenkins and Dole led an effort to bring women into leadership positions across the DOT.
She spent three years in the private sector as a partner for Quality Management Services from 1987 to 1990.
Jenkins then joined the
U.S. Department of Agriculture as Director of the department's Office of Advocacy and Enterprise, a position she held from 1990 to 1993.
Library of Congress
Between 1994 and 2010, Jenkins was a senior adviser, chief of staff, and Chief Operating Officer of the
Library of Congress
The Library of Congress (LOC) is the research library that officially serves the United States Congress and is the ''de facto'' national library of the United States. It is the oldest federal cultural institution in the country. The library is ...
.
In 2001 she worked with then-first lady
Laura Bush
Laura Lane Welch Bush (''née'' Welch; born November 4, 1946) is an American teacher, librarian, memoirist and author who was First Lady of the United States from 2001 to 2009. Bush previously served as First Lady of Texas from 1995 to 2000. ...
and
Librarian of Congress
The Librarian of Congress is the head of the Library of Congress, appointed by the president of the United States with the advice and consent of the United States Senate, for a term of ten years. In addition to overseeing the library, the Libra ...
James H. Billington
James Hadley Billington (June 1, 1929 – November 20, 2018) was an American academic and author who taught history at Harvard and Princeton before serving for 42 years as CEO of four federal cultural institutions. He served as the 13th Librarian ...
to launch the
National Book Festival,
an annual
intergenerational event that promotes reading and literacy by bringing in authors, illustrators and poets for presentations, talks and book signings. The festival grew to become a large-scale event, with more than 200,000 people attending in 2016.
In 2008 she developed the Library of Congress Experience,
which digitized important written works including the
Declaration of Independence, the
Bill of Rights, and the
Constitution of the United States
The Constitution of the United States is the supreme law of the United States of America. It superseded the Articles of Confederation, the nation's first constitution, in 1789. Originally comprising seven articles, it delineates the natio ...
. This allowed people visiting the library to compare the rough drafts of these founding documents with their final versions, showing edits, corrections and margin notes made by key authors including
Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson (April 13, 1743 – July 4, 1826) was an American statesman, diplomat, lawyer, architect, philosopher, and Founding Fathers of the United States, Founding Father who served as the third president of the United States from 18 ...
,
Benjamin Franklin
Benjamin Franklin ( April 17, 1790) was an American polymath who was active as a writer, scientist, inventor, statesman, diplomat, printer, publisher, and political philosopher. Encyclopædia Britannica, Wood, 2021 Among the leading inte ...
, and
John Adams
John Adams (October 30, 1735 – July 4, 1826) was an American statesman, attorney, diplomat, writer, and Founding Fathers of the United States, Founding Father who served as the second president of the United States from 1797 to 1801. Befor ...
.
AARP
Jenkins joined AARP in 2010 as president of AARP Foundation, the organization's affiliated charity. In this role, she focused the foundation on four areas of work affecting Americans age 50 and up: income insecurity, housing, isolation and hunger.
She created a program with
NASCAR
The National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing, LLC (NASCAR) is an American auto racing sanctioning and operating company that is best known for stock car racing. The privately owned company was founded by Bill France Sr. in 1948, and hi ...
driver
Jeff Gordon
Jeffery Michael Gordon (born August 4, 1971) is an American former professional stock car racing driver, who is the Vice Chairman for Hendrick Motorsports. He raced full-time from 1993 to 2015, driving the No. 24 Chevrolet for Hendrick M ...
called Drive to End Hunger, which drew attention to the issue of
food insecurity
Food security speaks to the availability of food in a country (or geography) and the ability of individuals within that country (geography) to access, afford, and source adequate foodstuffs. According to the United Nations' Committee on World F ...
among older Americans by donating 36 million meals and providing funding to more than 100 organizations fighting hunger in the U.S.
Following one year as Chief Operating Officer, Jenkins was appointed to her current role as CEO of AARP in 2014. According to ''
The Washington Post
''The Washington Post'' (also known as the ''Post'' and, informally, ''WaPo'') is an American daily newspaper published in Washington, D.C. It is the most widely circulated newspaper within the Washington metropolitan area and has a large nati ...
'', Jenkins "fundamentally recast the organization’s mission"
based on the trend of
longevity
The word " longevity" is sometimes used as a synonym for "life expectancy" in demography. However, the term ''longevity'' is sometimes meant to refer only to especially long-lived members of a population, whereas ''life expectancy'' is always d ...
. AARP was originally formed to serve people approaching and in
retirement
Retirement is the withdrawal from one's position or occupation or from one's active working life. A person may also semi-retire by reducing work hours or workload.
Many people choose to retire when they are elderly or incapable of doing their j ...
but she observed that as Americans are living longer they are working longer and are eschewing previous generations' definition of what lifestyles they choose to live at and beyond age 50. She described this shift, saying ''"we know that people who continue to work or even volunteer can live longer than people who don't. So all those misperceptions of what people want when they retire or what they want to do in their older life I think is being totally torn apart by the idea that people are going to live longer, healthier — and hopefully in better financial shape — than they had in the past."''
Under Jenkins' tenure close to half of AARP's 38 million members are still working full- or part-time,
representing her strategy to evolve AARP as
Boomers
Baby boomers, often shortened to boomers, are the Western demographic cohort following the Silent Generation and preceding Generation X. The generation is often defined as people born from 1946 to 1964, during the mid-20th century baby boom. The ...
and
Generation X
Generation X (or Gen X for short) is the Western world, Western demographic Cohort (statistics), cohort following the baby boomers and preceding the millennials. Researchers and popular media use the mid-to-late 1960s as starting birth years a ...
ers desire and need to continue working longer than their parents' generations. She oversaw the introduction of new benefits designed to help AARP members find work at employers with age-friendly employment practices
and continued the organization's involvement in advancing legislation to strengthen federal age discrimination laws.
References
External links
Jo Ann Jenkins on TwitterC-SPAN Q&A with Jo Ann Jenkins
{{DEFAULTSORT:Jenkins, Jo Ann
Living people
American nonprofit chief executives
People from Mobile, Alabama
Spring Hill College alumni
1958 births