Jo Townson is a public health consultant and alumna of Eugene Lang College. She graduated from Lang in 1997 with a BA in urban studies and cultural studies and has an MS from the Education and Online Teaching and Learning program at California State University, East Bay. Townson grew up in the Bay Area of California and moved to New York in the early 1990s. While a student at Lang, Townson was involved in the Mobilization, a student-led protest calling for economic justice and diversity at the university. Following her studies at Lang, Townson worked at Clio Visualizing History, an educational organization dedicated to public history. Thereafter, she returned to California, taking a position at the James Redford Institute for Transplant Awareness, a not-for-profit focused on creating awareness around organ donation. Subsequently, she has held a variety of positions in public health. As of 2019, Townson is a senior consultant in Clinical Education at Kaiser Permanente; she lives in Oakland, California with her family.

The Mobilization for Real Diversity, Democracy, and Economic Justice was a student-led protest movement at The New School during the 1996-1997 academic year. The Mobilization (sometimes referred to as "the Mobe") was a coalition that fought for diversity and equity at the university. The Mobilization began in 1996 with student outcry over The New School's decision not to offer a popular professor, M. Jacqui Alexander, a contract extension. Alexander is an Afro-Carribbean, feminist scholar who was a member of the Graduate Faculty from 1994-1997. Her teachings on gender, sexuality, race, and class inspired many of the students who started the Mobilization. The students and faculty in the Mobilization engaged in an intersectional critique of The New School, arguing that the struggles of people of color, women, and members of the LGBTQ+ community at the university were linked. They demanded pay equity, wage increases for security guards, a more diverse curriculum, and the hiring and retention of more faculty of color, including Alexander. The Mobilization held numerous protests throughout the 1996-1997 academic year, including an occupation of the Graduate Faculty building. Their movement culminated in a hunger strike by students and faculty that lasted over two weeks. M. Jacqui Alexander and many other leaders in the Mobilization did not return for the 1997 school year.

The Graduate Faculty, often referred to as the GF, is a division of The New School now known as The New School for Social Research, and encompasses graduate degree programs in the social sciences. The former Graduate Faculty building at 65 Fifth Avenue was demolished in 2009 to make way for the construction of the University Center building. Eugene Lang College is an undergraduate division of The New School. Students, faculty, and staff from the Graduate Faculty, Lang, and the other divisions of The New School participated in the Mobilization.