Scottsdale senior wants to ‘build bridges, not walls’

SHANNON LEVITT | STAFF WRITER

decade ago, after the Scottsdale Jewish senior’s fifth back surgery, a doctor told Rose she simply couldn’t sit in a chair all day anymore. She happily accepted the news because it meant she could finally focus on work she’d always wanted to do: community service.

Rose’s long-held dream was to work with diverse communities, to build relationships and to bring people together.

“As long as you’re kind and understanding, you find that people are more alike than not,” Rose told Jewish News.

Some of the groups she works with are Tomorrow We Vote, a Black and Brownled non-partisan, nonprofit Arizonabased organization helping young people to vote; Aliento, a community organization serving undocumented, Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) and mixed immigration status families; National Council of Jewish Women of Arizona (NCJW AZ), a Jewish women’s organization advocating for women’s rights and social justice; and the Islamic Center of the East Valley.

she could best offer assistance in letting the public know about his efforts on keeping elections secure, work that should not be partisan, she said.

“I’ll never give up,” she said. To illustrate her point, she set her ringtone as the theme song from the movie “Rocky.”

Joanie Rose wakes up early most mornings eager to jump out of bed and get to work, even though she’s long retired from her career as a corporate travel agent for the agency she owned with her husband, Jerry. More than a