Joann Griffith is a graduate of Boston College, Massachusetts, where she earned a doctoral degree in counselling psychology. She has practised in clinical, psychiatric and academic contexts with a focus on the application of clinical and counselling theory and skills within a multicultural context. Her applied experience focuses on integration and application of person-centred, developmental, psychodynamic and cognitive-behavioural approaches, for example.  

Joann has also worked as a consultant for a variety of institutions and organisations providing educational, training, and research services. She has functioned in these capacities on issues of gender and development, violence, HIV/AIDS, and child abuse, among others. She has worked as a Resident Intern with the Pan American Health Organisation/World Health Organisation (PAHO/WHO, Washington, DC), training on issues of international and public health, including policy analysis, and systems and structures of health in the Americas, including Latin America and the Caribbean. As certified in International Public Health, she then worked as a consultant with PAHO/WHO in Belize with the Latin American and Caribbean community. Joann was later responsible for implementing PAHO/WHO’s technical cooperation in Belize specifically in the areas of Women, Health and Development, and Health Promotion and Protection. This training has led to continued work as a professional in policy, project and programme development and implementation.

She is currently the Programme Director for the suite of Business Psychology Programmes at Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh, Scotland. Previously she has been a Senior Lecturer and Programme Leader/Manager, developing and implementing programmes for an English University, working in education and training students and trainees in basic psychotherapy, as a Higher Education Academy Fellow. There she coordinated graduate and postgraduate programmes with external stakeholders such as the Improving Access to Psychological Services (IAPT) governmental initiatives in the National Health Service (NHS) along with Health Education (East Midlands, HEE), implementing the National Psychological Wellbeing Programme with HEE, the NHS, and other mental health services, while co-chairing the Professional Accreditation and Training Committee (PACT) of the British Psychological Society (BPS) for the Psychological Wellbeing Practitioner group, with prior consultancies delivering training in Social-Behavioural-based models of intervention for frontline workers, such as social workers and nurses, in London and Cardiff, for example. 

She currently continues to work as a psychologist, lecturer, and consultant, with presentations and projects of an applied nature focused on designing and implementing interventions for immediate impact or to address specific needs in the community.