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| Jo Jones |
Five questions with Jo Jones
Jo Jones, a telecome energy consultant, was recently elected to the governing committee for the Dallas/Fort Worth Federal Club and was chosen to chair a subcommittee on family events for the organization.
Why are GLBT family issues important to you?
My partner, Wendy North Jones, and I have two children, boys ages 3-and-a-half and 20 months. When you look at your kids, you think about what the world will be like when they grow up, and you want to do something to make it better.
Why are you involved with the Dallas/Fort Worth Federal Club?
We were members of the Federal Club before, but when we started having the babies, we had to readjust some priorities, financial and otherwise. But with some of the losses our community has suffered lately, like the anti-gay-marriage amendment, we decided it was time to get back into the organization. Being in the Federal Club is more expensive than just being a member of the Human Rights Campaign, but it gives you more of a leadership role in the community. There is real value in it.
Why were you chosen to chair the subcommittee on family events?
When they were interviewing me for a seat on the governing committee, I kept talking about family issues, so they said, “Why don’t you head up a committee on family events?”
Are events for GLBT families a new thing for the Federal Club?
A lot of people have always seen the Federal Club as a white guys’ club, and that has been somewhat true. But that is changing. We have been having events especially for women for some time now. And we recently launched a minority outreach program to and an associates outreach program to bring in members under age 30. The family events is our newest program.
What’s on the calendar for your committee?
We have some really great members and we are starting to sit down and talk about what we want to do, and that is to create events that draw in GLBT families and give them the chance to meet other GLBT families. We want to bring in people who don’t have children of their own, so our children can meet people in the community. We want to start building that village that it takes to raise a child.
This article appeared in the Dallas Voice print edition, March 24, 2006.