Joy joined the Centre for Scottish Public Policy in January 2009 and spun out Adopt an Intern (AAI) a year later. The company has since gone from strength to strength, placing over 1420 graduates and returners, from all social and economic backgrounds, into valuable paid work. It has worked with over 800 cross-sector businesses who come to AAI keen to improve their talent pipeline and diversity in the workforce.

She served for 20 years in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and has lived and worked in Brazil, Argentina and Germany. Joy also worked for many years in fashion retail where she recruited, trained and mentored sales managers, culminating in a successful business in Germany.

Adopt an Intern won the RBS-sponsored 'Customer Focus' Award at the Scottish Business Awards in November 2015. The year before, Joy had been shortlisted for 'Female Entrepreneur of the Year'. Various other recognitions followed over the years and in 2017 she was shortlisted for Diversity Hero of the Year at the Scottish Diversity Awards, following her work with disabled graduates and minority ethnic women returners.

She is determined to see AAI flourish further through working with SMEs and multi-nationals, whilst staying true to its roots - supporting and empowering start ups, charities and social enterprises across Scotland.

Since 2015, AAI has been a support partner for Scottish EDGE, offering finalists and winners guidance on how best to build their teams at a crucial stage of scale-up.