According to his mother, Jo's penchant for doing his own thing surfaced when he ran away from nursery school. His scholastic career spanned fifteen schools and many classroom periods spent in search of alternative education at the movies. Being oblivious to his dyslexia didn't make Jo much of a wordsmith. So from an early age he started thinking in pictures.

Whilst working as a clothing salesman, a client gave Jo a Super 8 camera in lieu of a bad debt. He joined an amateur filmmakers club and in no time was the recipient of numerous awards. At one of these awards ceremonies, the SA Ten Best, Jo was approached by an advertising agency creative, with a proposition to apply his skills to making commercials.

With the success and profitability of the commercials industry, Jo's dreams of leaving a profound mark as a moviemaker, slowly became dormant. Over the next twenty years, Jo and his company, Creative Vision developed a track record servicing a high profile list of corporate clients via the countries leading agencies.

2006 brought home the truth that commercial success was not the true measure of his filmmaking prowess and Jo found himself wanting nothing more than to live out the dream of making features. He decided to make a short film as his calling card. Not only to showcase his ability as a director and storyteller, but also his production company, which specialises in visual effects and 3-D animation. The Mamtsotsi Bird, which boasts no less than 25 visual effects and a terrifying CG creature, has to date been accepted into over 50 film festivals worldwide and has won no less than six gold awards internationally.

With his second film, Jo wanted to prove to himself and the industry that he can take kids from the ?Hood' who had never acted before and extract great performances from them which has led to his second short film Yolanda a character driven bittersweet look at a teenagers rite of passage and sexual identity.

Jo at present is developing 2 feature films which he hopes to be shooting in the not too distant future.