Jo Ann Intili

1945 - 2025

Jo Ann Intili
07/11/1945 - 04/22/2025
Jo Ann Intili passed away on April 22, 2025 in Palm Springs, California after three months struggling to recover from serious medical problems she suffered in late January. She will be remembered by family, friends, research collaborators, and young people she mentored as a generous, warm, analytic, independent-minded woman who loved life and exploring how to make peoples' lives better. A dreamer and a doer.
Jo Ann worked tirelessly throughout her life to advance social justice and political equity here in the U.S. and globally. As a young college graduate, she went to Afghanistan to serve in the Peace Corps, came home, finished a doctorate in sociology at Stanford University and then spent years on research and strategic planning to improve adult education. She went on then to work for more than a decade providing technical support, and data reporting services for AmeriCorps. In 2003 she returned to Afghanistan to collaborate in USAID-funded efforts to bring education to thousands of rural villages.
In the four decades Jo Ann and her husband, Ed, spent together they were devoted partners in many things: family life with Ed's son, Cassady, daughter, Kyra, and three beautiful grandchildren, Katalina, Kaia, and August, travel, and social activism. Jo Ann loved to explore new adventures and places. In her 40's she took up flying and earned her pilot's license flying a small Tomahawk around northern California. She travelled across the world: Bhutan, Nepal, Bolivia, Peru, Mexico. And most recently walking through rural Japan. Happy exploration closer to home included the Sierras, wandering the Southwest, summer hikes in Vermont, magical solar eclipses in Oregon and Texas.
During the last 15 years of her life, Jo Ann worked continually and strategically to provide philanthropic support to a wide range of organizations dedicated to advancing social justice, community development, responsible media, immigrant equity and community well-being. She and her husband, Ed, were honored in 2018 by California as outstanding funders and volunteer supporters of community service.
During her final days, Jo Ann's constant concern was Trump administration subversion of democracy, and dismantling of crucial scientific, education, legal, and cultural institutions. She feared for the future not only of the nation, but for families around the world.
Contributions in her memory can be made to: La Clinica de La Raza, Welcoming America, The American Immigration Council, the Immigrant Legal Resource Center, the Central Valley Immigrant Integration, or the American Business Immigrant Coalition.