Diversity Woman Magazine

WIN 2016

Leadership and Executive Development for women of all races, cultures and backgrounds

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38 D I V E R S I T Y W O M A N W i n t e r 2 0 1 6 d i v e r s i t y w o m a n . c o m A ARP chief ex- ecutive ofcer Jo Ann Jenkins has no trouble own- ing her age. Born in 1958, the same year AARP (Ameri- can Association of Retired Persons) was founded, Jenkins doesn't consider 70 the new 60, or 50 the new 40—or any such baloney. As far as she is concerned, 50 is the new 50, and that's how it should be. Her mission is to ensure that AARP's 38 mil- lion members, all 50 years old or older, are proud to em- brace their age. "It used to be that many people looked at turning 50 as the beginning of the de- cline toward death," says Jen- kins. "But that mind-set has changed. We're going to live 20 years longer than people who turned 50 did 30 or 40 years ago, which means we have another 30 or 40 years to make a diference in the world and to do all sorts of exciting things with our lives." Jenkins has developed a rallying cry that can work as both a slogan for the group and the foundation of her personal phi- losophy: Disrupt Aging. As the leader of the world's largest membership organization, Jenkins is determined to disrupt pretty much every precon- ceived notion of what it means to age in America. Retire at age 65? Not if it means giving up years of meaningful work. Stop running and start mall walking? Tell that to the 111,000 Ameri- cans over the age of 50 (and 3,500 over the age of 70) who ran a marathon last year, according to the nonproft RunningUSA. "I want people to own their age and feel good about who they are," says Jenkins, who became the CEO in September of 2014. "Tis doesn't mean that we should deny the fact of aging. Rather, we must choose how we defne the aging process. Tis whole notion of what you should or should not do at 50 or 60 or 70 should be left up to the individual, not to societal expectations. I wanted to turn on its head the culture in this country that looks at ag- ing as a period of decline rather than a period of growth and opportunity." Troughout her life and career, "disruption" has been Jenkins's MO—although she won't admit it. She says simply that she has never let the expectations of others defne her. Jenkins was raised on tiny Mon Louis Island, on the Alabama coast, where she was surrounded by a large extended family. Her mother was a home- maker and her father was a merchant marine. Today, the island is attached to the mainland by a series of bridges, but when she was growing up there in the 1960s and 1970s, the sole connection was a one- lane roadway. Her older siblings had to take the bus two hours each way to attend the black Catholic school in the nearest city, Mobile, 15 or so miles away. Jenkins instead attended a pre- dominantly white public school in Teodore, Alabama, where she was president of the student body and was voted most likely to succeed. "My siblings were eight to 10 years older than I was, and they grew up in a very diferent kind of South in the 1960s than I did several years later," she says. Maybe so, but even in the 1970s, it took confdence, smarts, and determination for an African American female to be elected student body president. It also took a ferce independence. "I don't put labels on what I should or shouldn't be doing at a certain age," says Jenkins. After graduating from high school in 1976, Jenkins attended Spring Hill College, a private Catholic school in Mobile, earn- ing a bachelor's degree in political science. She then moved to Washington, DC, where she had interned over the summers in college, and began working in the federal government. She "I don't put labels on what I should or shouldn't be doing at a certain age."

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