Bio
Once one of the first female DJs on Top 40 radio in America, Jo had a long career in radio and voiceovers in New York City and South Florida. At one point, her air name was “The Rock and Roll Madame” and her show followed Howard Stern’s on WXRK/K-ROCK. (Links at the bottom for more about those days.)
A New Yorker to the core, she moved to the Greensboro, NC, area to care for her estranged, declining mother—kicking and screaming the whole way. She was sure she would be back in New York and on the radio again very soon. Transformed by the experience and charmed by the South, she stayed. A bestselling memoir endorsed by Maya Angelou followed and she became a writer. Read about her books here.
In 2018, it was discovered by accident she had a pheochromocytoma, a typically non-cancerous tumor, in one of her adrenal glands. It was churning out ten times too much adrenalin on and off for, perhaps, decades. Biology is destiny, as the saying goes, and post-adrenalectomy she had a new lease on life. She became a licensed auctioneer for charity galas. Under the mentorship of Benjamin Farrell at Custom Benefit Auctions she traveled throughout America raising money for great causes. Then came Bill, followed by the pandemic.
She married after being single for thirty years and promptly “rewired” (her word for retired).
In 2025, she faced another rare medical drama: ocular/uveal melanoma. The tumor was too big to radiate. Her right eye was removed. Thankfully, the cancer had not spread. There is no cure. She is an ardent advocate of having retinal images as part of standard eye care practice, or as an add-on service. She considers them to be mammograms for the eyes without radiation. And they can catch a lot more than just cancer or eye-related conditions.
Jo’s passions are travel, spying on wildlife with her trail camera, rowing on her ERG, and sumo. She lives quietly in North Carolina with her mathematician husband William Pardon and cannot play Sudoku to save her life.