Jo is a born-and-bred Geordie, having gone through her school career in Newcastle and continuing on to complete her Bachelors in Computer Science at Northumbria University.
Nowadays, Jo is a Technical Lead and the Accessibility Community of Practice Lead at Leighton, the North’s leading AWS Software Development Consultancy. Having spent the earliest years of her career working for Accenture on large public sector innovations, it beggars belief that Jo ever finds time to come up for breath, let alone dedicate significant amounts of time to advocating for the empowerment of women in the workplace and in the world of Tech through initiatives like the TechUp Programme (where she has acted as a mentor and coach to women looking to pivot to a career in Tech for the last 2 years), SmartWorks (who provide unemployed women aged 16 and above with interview clothing and coaching to break down socioeconomic barriers to getting into the workplace) and Women In Tech North East (where Jo has featured as a Panellist for a session around the importance of being a strong role model for other women and is organising an event on allyship within technology).