She was 22 when she met Pedro Poveda but he did not consider her youth  to be a handicap. He placed in the hands of this young woman the project he was starting.

It was 1913 and Josefa Segovia Morón had just graduated from the Escuela Superior de Magisterio in Madrid. (Teaching School). Father Poveda was looking for someone well trained to head the Academy for aspiring teachers he had started in Jaén.

 As a result of the close collaboration of those years, she became well acquainted with the Founder of the emerging Lay Association that received civil and ecclesiastical approval in 1917. Poveda himself had called his Work a ‘good idea’ and Segovia abandoned her plans of matrimony and gave herself to the task of overseeing the numerous Academies that began all over Spain.

It was Josefa Segovia, as President of the Association, who presented the Work to Pope Pius XI, in order to obtain on January 11 of 1924, the perpetual canonical approval of the Association.

The Work continued to grow. Already during the life of the Founder it reached America. When Poveda died in 1936, Josefa Segovia continued the expansion of its mission and the formation of the members.

She knew she had been entrusted with a mission. Poveda had publicly said of her, in 1922: "You embody the spirit of the Teresian Association”.

SIGNIFICANT DATES IN HER LIFE

• 1891. Josefa Segovia is born, October 10 in  Jaen, the second of six children. Her family provides an atmosphere keen to culture and artistic sensibility. At three she starts informal schooling with a teacher who is friend of the family. She then attends Catholic School at the Religious Servants of Mary 
• 1904. Lives in Granada with her grandparents on her mother’s side where she attends school to enter the Teaching School.
• 1909. Obtains the certification as a teacher with extraordinary success   Returns to Jaen to prepare her exam for the Teaching School in Madrid. She begins relating with a young man from Granada who is studying medicine.
• 1913-1914. Pedro Poveda, newly arrived in Jaen offers her to be in charge of a new Academy for aspiring teachers, called Academy of st. Teresa. In June she obtains the title from the Teaching School in Madrid Postpones the idea of matrimony
• 1915. Appointed teacher at the Teaching School in Orense. Later on invited by the Teaching school of Granada. Gives up the idea of matrimony
• 1916.  She is named Primary School Inspector in the Province of Jaen. Named to be Secretary of the first governing council of the Povedan Academies. Visits Avila with a group headed by Poveda
• 1916. Begins a 7 year span of intense professional involvement
• 1917. Diocesan and civil approval of the Teresian Association in Jaen. She is pat of the first governing group.
• 1919. Named president of the Teresian Association
• 1923. Leaves aside her professional career to dedicate herself to the work of Poveda. Goes to Rome to present to the Pope the Teresian Association. It receives the Vatican approval January 11, 1924.
• 1928. Is elected President of the Teresian Association by unanimous vote. Brings the T.A. to America: Chile, (1928) and Rome (1934).
• 1936. Father Poveda dies as martyr on July 28 1936. She assumes full government of the Association
• 1946. Third trip to Rome, once finished World War II. Re-inforces T.A- presence in Latin-American countries and she visits: Argentina, Uruguay, Chile, and Peru y Bolivia.
• 1952-53: The Association begins its presence in France, England, the United States and Jerusalem
• 1955. She prepares and attends the opening of the beatification process of father Poveda. She visits the Holy Land
• 1957. She dies in Madrid, March 29, after an operation. She is 65 years old.

At her death, she leaves the Teresian Association present in the following countries:
Spain (1911), Chile (1928), Italy (1934), Argentina (1938), Uruguay (1939), Guinea (1941), Bolivia and Peru (1943), Portugal (1945), England (1948) Philippines and Mexico (1950), Jerusalem and Venezuela (1952), France (1953), Dominican Republic (1954), United States and Germany (1955), Belgium (1957).

In her last governing council meeting she establishes to begin T.A. presence in Japan.

2006. December 20th, the Congregation for the Causes of the Saints promulgates the decree establishing that she has lived Christian virtues in a heroic manner.  Her cause of beatification awaits a miracle attributed to her intercession.

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