Jo Ann Gerber Email and Phone Number

Jo Ann spent over 20 years working on the business/finance side of planned giving. She is conversant in all aspects of planned giving, including charitable trusts, pooled income funds, charitable gift annuities, bequest administration, and the various liquid and illiquid assets used to fund gifts. PROFESSIONAL BACKGROUND AND EDUCATION: Prior to moving to California when her husband retired in 2015, Jo Ann worked for the MIT Investment Management Company. Prior to that, she served as Manager of Communications and Trust Services at The First Church of Christ, Scientist in Boston, Massachusetts. She earned a Bachelor of Arts, magna cum laude, from Wellesley College with a major in Spanish, and is a graduate of trust-management programs at the New England School of Banking and the New England Banking Institute. PRESENT: Jo Ann is currently working on a project to publish her mother's memoir, which describes what it was like growing up in a family of Mexican migrant farm workers in California during the 30's and 40's. The nation's documentary archives portray migrant farm workers of that era as victims of an industrialized "open-air factory" that employed unskilled labor without the employment benefits enjoyed by unskilled labor in eastern industries. One Chicano writer described the economic system under which they labored as one that was brutal and inhuman. In light of these national portrayals, and the country's ongoing immigration debate, the memoir provides the opportunity to look at one family's experience -- particularly from the perspective of the women and children -- and to feel the impact of their family and cultural values as they rose from victimization to agency and assimilated into American society.