Jo McGuire is the CEO and President of Five Minutes of Courage, where she uses her experience as a subject matter expert to focus on the impact of legal marijuana policies on young people, families, workplaces and communities.
Jo is the founding Chairman of the Board of Directors for the National Drug and Alcohol Screening Association and advocates for safe and drug-free workplaces worldwide. She is also a Certified Professional Collector and Trainer (CPCT) and a Certified Designated Employee Representative Trainer (CDERT), who consults and trains professionals overseeing Safety Sensitive Employees in the compliance of federal DOT guidelines for drug and alcohol screening programs. Jo also assists educators with classroom and assembly-style presentations, aimed at youth drug prevention, and parent awareness and education. She also serves as the Senior Project Manager for TSS, Inc. a Third Party Administrator in the drug testing industry and is a featured speaker on the National Marijuana Initiative’s speaker’s bureau.
As the program manager for a statewide prevention initiative focused on school violence prevention, Jo developed projects for risk-reduction, increased education and prevention programs in the field of youth intervention and school safety. She received recognition by the Colorado Department of Public Safety, the Colorado State Patrol, the Safe2Tell Board of Directors and the Colorado Springs Police Department for her outstanding achievements in the field of school safety and critical infrastructure management. She has served on the Colorado-Ready planning team, the Adams County Youth Initiative prevention council, the Colorado School Safety Planning Team, the Automated Critical Asset Management System and has been a member of the Colorado Association of School Executives. She has worked extensively with public and private foundations in collaborative efforts for community wellness, awareness and education such as the I Love U Guys Foundation, the El Pomar Foundation, AARP, The Colorado Trust, Children’s Hospital, and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security Faith-Based & Neighborhood Partnership.
As an accomplished writer and speaker, Jo has traveled extensively to conduct seminars, trainings, conferences and leadership retreats for the public, private and non-profit sector. She has successfully attained and managed over 2.5 million dollars in grant funded-projects over the course of her career at both the local and federal levels and has served as a consultant for non-profit grant writers and project managers.
Jo participated in the 1st annual Latin American Congress on Safe and Drug-Free Workplaces in Santiago, Chile, representing employer’s rights to maintain best practices in substance use prevention, as modeled in the U.S. In 2013 she was appointed to serve on the Colorado Governor’s Task Force, convened to recommend a legislative framework for the regulation of marijuana after the passage of Amendment 64. As a part of the Taxation, Banking and Civil Law work group, Jo lent her expertise in the form of recommendations for drug and alcohol testing in the workplace. She also represented the National Drug and Alcohol Testing Industry at the 2016 United Nations’ General Assembly to address world drug agreements. Jo has also joined efforts with concerned citizens around the state of Colorado in grass roots efforts focused on bringing proven medical research and scientific data to the forefront of the national effort to legalize marijuana in the U.S. Jo works closely with national health experts to educate state and federal policy makers on the importance of public health, pertaining to drug and alcohol testing practices and policies.
