How Did I Get Here?

Jo Ann Jenkins

Chief executive officer, AARP
from
  • Education
  • Theodore High School, Theodore, Ala., class of 1976
  • Spring Hill College, Mobile, Ala., class of 1980
  • Work Experience
  • 1980
    Voter outreach worker, Ronald Reagan campaign
  • 1981–85
    Executive assistant, U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development
  • 1985–87
    Special assistant to the secretary, U.S. Dept. of Transportation
  • 1987–90
    Partner, Quality Management Services
  • 1990–93
    Director, Office of Advocacy and Enterprise, U.S. Dept. of Agriculture
  • 1994–2007
    Senior adviser, chief of staff, Library of Congress
  • 2007–10
    Chief operating officer, Library of Congress
  • 2010–13
    President, AARP Foundation
  • 2013–Present
    COO, executive vice president, CEO, AARP
  • Life Lessons
  • “Barriers are only as big as you make them.”
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  • “Treat people the way you want to be treated, whether it’s the person at the security desk or the executive.”
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  • “Develop a reputation as a straight talker. Make your words mean something when you say them.”
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  • High school graduation
    “My father was a merchant marine, and my siblings are all 8 to 10 years older than me, so when my father was out at sea, it was just my mother and me at home.”
  • Greeting President Reagan, 1981
  • “I’ve worked for or with every president or first lady since Reagan.”
  • “One of the things I’m proudest of is working closely with Secretary of Transportation Elizabeth Dole to put women in leadership positions throughout the department.”
  • “The big issue was, how do we digitize content? We came up with the digital standards for preservation that libraries and industries around the world use.”
  • With Michael Douglas, 2015
    “I’ve been focusing on how increased longevity gives us another 20 to 30 years to do something different. We have 38 million members.”
  • Published by PublicAffairs, 2016
  • “It’s a Jesuit school, like a close-knit family. You got to know your professors closely at a time when that was unusual in universities.”
  • Checking out a replica of the Capitol grounds at the Capitol Visitor Center, 2008
  • “I tried not to make any unnecessary enemies in Washington. You never know who will be your boss one day.”
  • “It’s a fascinating place. There’s more than 4,000 staff members, with employees who know over 260 languages.”
  • “I’d always wanted to run a nonprofit. In two years, we went from 800,000 donors to 2 million.”
  • Watching President Obama sign the Improving Medicare Post-Acute Care Transformation (Impact) Act of 2014 in the Oval Office