BIO

Joy brings more than two decades of business leadership, team management, and organizational strategy experience to her work. She has been an accomplished scientist, launched a non-profit start-up, led marketing for a rapidly growing venture, and was head of people strategy for a large global business unit. She views the world through this diverse lens, and consistently adds a multifaceted perspective to resolve complex problems, while helping to build leaders, teams, and organizations that align their systems with their values. 

Having recently led the Alliance for Building Better Medicine, a U.S.-based cluster of advanced pharmaceutical manufacturers, researchers and economic developers in the Richmond-Petersburg region, Joy continues to integrate her work in people development and career pathing with strategy and marketing to design teams and programs to deliver innovation and impact. Prior to her work at the Alliance, Joy worked on healthcare innovations for VCU and VCU Health, Joy led HR (People) Strategy for the Global Ultrasound Business of Philips HealthTech, where she drove a customer-centric leadership and culture change in one of the most mature businesses in Philips. Early in her career at Philips she held global leadership and managerial roles in clinical marketing, product management, and strategic marketing, growing a global team from five to one-hundred and fifty employees in under 2 years. Additionally, Joy was instrumental in the early scientific and strategic development of the Focused Ultrasound Foundation (www.fusfoundation.org), where she also launched and led a patient support organization for women with uterine fibroids (www.fibroidrelief.org). 

Joy earned her undergraduate and graduate degrees in Chemistry, earning her PhD from the University of Virginia in 2007, with research focusing on cancer immunotherapy applications of proteomics. Additionally, and maybe most importantly, Joy has been a meditation and yoga teacher for more than 20 years, where the blending of the personal and professional continues to be a lifelong intention to bring her work on the cushion and mat into every other area of her life.

She has been a student of yoga since 1998 and a teacher since 2001, completing her 200- and 500-hr certifications through Yoga Source in Richmond, VA and Boston Yoga School in MA. With her background in the sciences, Joy’s yoga teaching emphasizes an observer’s inquisitive awareness and cultivation of presence in postures both on and off the mat. Her teaching has been inspired by senior teachers in Ashtanga, Iyengar, Tantra, Yin yoga, meditation and mindfulness, somatic movement and bodywork, and she is blessed to have studied with a breadth of teachers globally. Joy’s personal practice is currently centered on Tantric Hatha yoga. She teaches classes online and in person, both in studios and for companies and organizations seeking to bring mindfulness and presence into their work.