Women's Equality Day, August 26

Come enjoy our dinner celebration!

I do not wish women to have power over men; but over themselves. 

— Mary Shelley 

 

For additional information, please contact Bunny Bond either by email addressed to mmbond [at] ktc.com or b y phone at 830-895-1880 .

The guest speaker for the evening is author and speaker Jo Ivester.

In 1967 when Jo was 10 years old, her father, a pediatrician, moved their family from Newton, Massachusetts, a suburb of Boston, to an all-black town in the Mississippi Delta, where they were one of only two white families and the only Jewish one. There, her father started a medical clinic, her mother taught at the local high school, and Jo was the only white student at her junior high. Living in a trailer in the poorest county in the nation during the turbulent 1960s, they were drawn into the heart of the civil rights movement.

Because of this experience, Jo is committed to advocating for equal rights for all. Her award-winning memoir about her family’s time in Mississippi,  The Outskirts of Hope: A Memoir  (She Writes Press, April 2015), has led to numerous speaking engagements about racial relations. In the last few years, Jo has broadened her focus to raise awareness about the transgender community. Inspired by her transgender son, she is now working on her second book,  Once a Girl, Always a Boy .
 
Before becoming a writer, Jo received a Bachelor of Science in civil engineering from MIT and an MBA from Stanford University. She worked for many years in transportation and operations management before teaching as an adjunct professor in the business school of St. Edward’s University in Austin, Texas. Now living in Fort Worth, Texas, she has been married to Jon Ivester for 37 years, has four children, two grandchildren, and another grandchild on the way.

(Editor's note: To read more about Jo, as well as additional details about her inspiration for writing the book  The Outskirts of Hope: A Memoir, please visit her website at  joivester.com/about and scroll down to “A Letter from Jo.”)