Jo Sauvageau Receives SBCO Lifetime Achievement Award | Community

SaddleBrooke Community Outreach recognizes the unique contribution of those volunteers who have provided 20 years of service to the organization with the Lifetime Achievement Award. Jo Sauvageau reached this milestone during SBCO’s 2025-26 fiscal year. SBCO deeply appreciates the difference long-time volunteers make in terms of their experience, reliability, and advocacy for our mission. While the award’s name might imply that the honoree has ended or is nearing the end of his or her service with SBCO, this is not the case – especially for Jo.

During the past two decades Jo has been a steadfast SBCO volunteer, while also running her own interior design and remodeling project management business. And although she has stepped back from most of her design projects, she hasn’t cut back on her work as a volunteer.

Over the past 20 years Jo has been a clothing buyer for Kids’ Closet. This has involved estimating needed inventory, shopping at shows in Las Vegas and online, and resolving last minute shortages when vendors fail to deliver or student numbers surge. During the past couple of years, she has also become part of the warehouse team, helping to replenish clothing bins in the Kids’ Closet “shopping” area and keeping an eye on potential shortfalls. In addition to her work with Kids’ Closet, Jo has worked on the annual SBCO Food Drive and served as a docent for the annual Home Tour.

Since October 2022, Jo has volunteered two days a week in the clothing department of the Golden Goose Thrift Shop and helps to inspect and price rugs on Friday mornings. In December 2023 she began serving as the SBCO representative on the Golden Goose’s board of directors. As such, she helps ensure that SBCO and IMPACT of Southern Arizona (the nonprofits that share the Golden Goose’s proceeds) are equally represented in the board’s decisions. As of July 1st of this year, she will begin a two-year term as the president of the board.

Jo’s Lifetime Achievement Award is well-deserved. But it is merely a milestone in her long career as a volunteer. Far from hanging up her roller skates, she’s just getting started.