Biography
Jo is a scholar-practitioner focused on equitable team-building and collaboration. They coach professionals in leadership roles to nurture team members’ individual and collective capacity for the purpose of building communities in which all members can thrive. Jo takes an interdisciplinary approach to exploring power dynamics on teams, particularly in the context of sport, grounded in a feminist cultural studies perspective. Jo’s teaching and research is also informed by their practical experience navigating competitive and recreational sport environments around the world as a competitive distance runner and Watson fellow, coaching collegiate and post-collegiate competitive and recreational athletes, and facilitating mutually-beneficial partnerships as a community engagement professional in higher education.
Jo is intentional about incorporating different ways of knowing in course materials and activities, and ensuring that course materials include the perspectives of those most impacted by the social issues examined in their courses. Jo is also committed to high-impact practices such as community-based learning, which they incorporate into all of their courses.
Jo is the athletics inclusive climate & belonging senior specialist for the nonprofit Athlete Ally. In this role, they conduct research and develop educational materials for college and university athletic departments nation-wide to promote LGBTQIA+ inclusion in sport.
As an undergraduate student at Oberlin, Jo earned seven All-American honors in cross country, indoor track and field, and outdoor track and field. Jo was later inducted into the Oberlin Athletics Hall of Fame. Jo was awarded a Watson Fellowship following graduation from Oberlin to explore the experiences of women runners in different cultural contexts, during which they trained and competed with teams around the world, in countries including Ethiopia, France, Norway, and Singapore.
Jo continues to train and compete as an elite distance runner. They are also passionate about yoga and strength training and are sponsored by sister businesses Yoga Squared and Akron Athletic Collective.
Jo is the author of the forthcoming book published by Routledge, Building Coactive Sport Teams: From Leadership to Coaction.
