Joy is the Director of The Performing & Visual Arts Centre Ltd, popularly called the Godown Arts Centre, a young nonprofit facility providing subsidized space for Kenyan artists and presenting artistic public programs for local audiences.

Through appointment by the Minister of Gender, Sports, Culture and Social Services, she has served on the Governing Council of the Kenya Cultural Centre, under which falls the Kenya National Theatre.

She is a Trustee of Gaara Dance Foundation whose aim is to develop contemporary African dance. In 2004, she received the National Women’s Council of Kenya 2004 Merit Award for her contribution to the development of the performing arts.

After college, Joy worked for 7 years as an architectural designer with a practice in Nairobi. At the same time, she joined the Kenyan pop band Musikly Speaking as lead singer. This all-woman music group made important contributions to Kenyan popular music by contemporizing traditional African folk-tunes and transforming them into popular dance music. She also became involved in theatre, in particular the Phoenix Players, Nairobi, where she was both an actor and a writer/director of musicals.

Leaving the architectural profession in the early nineties, Joy re-located temporarily to Sydney, Australia. Here, she pursued post-graduate studies in Voice, and upon graduation taught Voice & Text to student actors in Sydney, as well as working part-time as a radio presenter on the multicultural SBS Radio in Sydney. She presented the African Hour news and was dee-jay on the world music show Alchemy.

Returning to Nairobi in the late ‘90s, Joy, together with her business partners, launched two very popular and successful annual cultural events – the Love Jam, which celebrated contemporary Kenyan musicians in a live night-long concert, and Vunja Mifupa Games, a hilarious sporting event around an obstacle course.

Because of her keen interest in arts education for youth, Joy initiated a training program in performance-making for young people aged 15 to 22 years in Nairobi. This organization, Fame Trust, was among the ‘founder’ groups of a communal arts space concept which was finally realized as the Godown Arts Centre.