Biography

Joseph A. Curro, Jr. was born in 1965 at Beaufort Naval Hospital in South Carolina to Barbara (Pitts) and Joseph A. Curro, DMD, a lieutenant in the United States Navy stationed at Parris Island.

Joe was raised in Weymouth, Massachusetts, attending the public schools and St. Francis Xavier Parish. During high school, Joe excelled in foreign languages, and he gained proficiency in German as an American Field Service exchange student outside Basel, Switzerland.

Joe's interest in public service was aroused in his junior year at Weymouth South High School when he was selected to attend the Boys' State program of the American Legion. As a senior, he was honored with a "Classmates Today - Neighbors Tomorrow" community service award by the Jewish War Veterans of the United States of America, and he was voted by his classmates Most Likely to Succeed.

From 1983 to 1987, Joe attended Tufts University, where he pursued the study of the Russian and German languages and helped support himself as a supervisor of the universiy's student janitor program. He supplemented his education with a summer of intensive work at the Middlebury College Language Schools and back-to-back semesters abroad in the USSR and West Germany. During this time, Joe also completed an internship in the Boston office of United States Senator John F. Kerry, worked intermittently as a substitute teacher in the Weymouth Public Schools, and as a volunteer tutor in the Somerville Public Schools. He graduated cum laude from Tufts.

For nearly three years, Joe worked as a legislative aide to State Senator Bill Golden, where he was responsible for constituent relations and the management of the Senator's legislative agenda. During this time, Joe supported Senator Golden in his role as Senate chair of the Joint Committee on Public Service, working on many pieces of legislation pertaining to the terms and conditions of public employment, including the cancer presumption bill for firefighters. He also worked with the Senator to gain passage of the state's first hate crimes statute, for expansion of civil rights protections to prevent discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, and he drafted a bill encouraging the establishment of community service programs in public high schools.

After leaving the State House, Joe assisted refugees from the Soviet Union in finding jobs and establishing new lives in the United States. He also served as a coach in job search and interviewing skills to welfare recipients seeking to enter the workforce.

For several years after college, Joe was a board member of Project LUCK, working very closely with teachers, administrators, and parents on the establishment of academic and cultural exchanges between the Weymouth Public Schools and the Soviet republics of Russia, Georgia, and Kazakhstan. He also served on the Eastern Massachusetts planning committee for the annual seminar of the Hugh O'Brian Youth Leadership Foundation, acting as a mentor for high school sophomores, organizing discussion panels on topics such as public and community service and immigration, and coordinating transportation for the two-day conference.

In 1991, Joe commenced his studies with the fledgling Lemberg Program in International Economics and Finance (now the International Business School) at Brandeis University, from which he received a Master of Arts. He spent a semester abroad at the Koblenz School of Corporate Management and completed a market study that was recognized by the Small Business Administration New England Region as the best export case study of 1993. While at Brandeis, Joe worked weekends in the Visitor Services department of the Museum of Science in Boston.

Upon graduation, Joe was named 1993-1994 Edgar Bronfman East-West Scholar, resident at the G.V. Plekhanov Russian Economics Academy and working as a marketing intern in the Moscow office of British Petroleum. He witnessed firsthand the violence surrounding an attempted parliamentary coup and a subsequent state of emergency in October 1993.

During the course of his extensive study and travels abroad, Joe viewed firsthand the brutality of crumbling Communist autocracies, and he visited both Armenia and the Central and Eastern European sites of Holocaust atrocities. This firsthand experience informs his strong commitment to human rights and his dedication to educating new generations of people regarding the tragedies of the 20th Century.

In 1994, Joe married Lisa Moncevicz, a Colby College graduate and daughter of former Dennis Selectman Donald and Sandra Moncevicz. Shortly after their marriage, the couple decided to make their permanent residence in Arlington, renting an apartment on Park Avenue Extension and subsequently purchasing a home near the Symmes Hospital.

In 1995, Joe began working in the burgeoning world of the Internet, rotating between several stints at the Massachusetts Medical Society and a series of failed dot coms -- including a subsidiary of Ross Perot's technology empire -- and earning several professional certificates from Northeastern University. In 2002, Joe returned permanently to the Massachusetts Medical Society, where he is a leader in expanding the online offerings of the New England Journal of Medicine and the Society's professional newsletter offerings.

Joe brought his technology experience to the classroom for several years as a faculty member in the Internet Systems Management program of Bentley College. He also volunteered as a United States citizenship instructor and Disaster Action Team member with the American Red Cross. In the latter role, Joe often provided support to firefighters, performed property loss assessments at fire sites, and provided assistance to victims in some of Boston's hardest hit inner city neighborhoods; he was also on hand to offer direct support to attendees at the City of Boston's public memorial service during the week following the September 11, 2001 attacks.

Joe was first elected in 1999 to Town Meeting from Precinct 15 by vote of his caucus. In 2003, he was elected again on a strong write-in campaign, and in 2006 he topped the ballot among Town Meeting members for his precinct.

Joe was very active in advocating for his neighborhood during zoning and permitting procedures for the Symmes Hospital redevelopment project. He also worked with members of the Arlington Conservation Commission and Arlington Land Trust on conservation measures at the property and with the Transportation Advisory Committee regarding traffic analyses. As a member and chair of the Symmes Neighborhood Advisory Committee, Joe pressed for more reasonably scaled commercial signage and building heights at the Symmes property and acceptance of milestones for the mix of rental and owner-occupied units at the project, and he assisted in due diligence around the hiring of a Designated Town Representative and in generating up-to-date abutters lists.

In 2006, Joe was appointed by the Town Manager -- with approval from the Board of Selectmen -- to a seat on the Human Rights Commission, and he was elected chair by his peers just eight months later. During a very busy year, Joe and the Commission responded to incidents of racist graffiti and hate mail; assisted residents with the resolution of questions regarding the fair application of specific policies of the Arlington School Committee; held numerous public forums; and conducted facilitated training for School and Town officials.

When a number of public officials received anti-Semitic and threatening email, Joe spearheaded the collection of over 1,400 signatures on a public statement regarding standards for civil dialogue. He also represented the Commission in ramping up Arlington's participation in the No Place for Hate program; last summer -- in the wake of concerns about policies of the original sponsor, particularly around the Armenian Genocide -- Joe played a leading role in helping to recast the program as a local Arlington initiative.

Joe is the father of two daughters: a first grader at Stratton School and a preschooler at Sunshine Nursery School. He is a parishioner at St. Eulalia Church, a former choir member at the Church of St. James the Apostle, and a member of Pax Christi USA, the national Catholic peace movement.

Joe credits his commitment to public service to his family: his father spent most of his life in military service with the United States Navy and Army, retiring with the rank of Colonel, and is a veteran of the Weymouth Appropriation (Finance) Committee; his mother is a former member of the League of Women Voters; and his siblings include a professional firefighter, an EFL teacher, and a former auditor of public housing authorities around the Commonwealth.