Joy spent her first 62 years in rural Iowa raising her family and working in medical facilities. When her two children began college, so did she, receiving a Bachelor of Science in Nursing from the University of Iowa in 1974, specializing in Psychiatric/Mental Health.

During the next 17 years she worked as a staff nurse at U of I Psychiatric Hospital, Director of Nursing in Nursing Home/Assisted Living, Nurse Supervisor at a State Hospital School for the Mentally Retarded, and Program Director for a County Mental Health Residential System. Also Joy wrote all day workshops for health care providers to get CEUs and curriculum for correspondence courses that were sold in states that required CEUs for licensure. During this time she traveled over Iowa presenting her workshops in all day seminars.

Joy received her Master of Science Degree in 1991 from Boston University majoring in Psychiatric Rehabilitation Counseling and Education, and moved to Arizona in 1992 to be near her widowed mother. The first three years she worked as a Nurse Manager at Maricopa Medical Center, Psychiatric Annex.  In the fall of 1995 ASU called her to teach Psychiatric/Mental Health in the College of Nursing on the West campus, then in Tempe, then at the downtown Phoenix campus. She finally ended the happiest years in her career, retiring from the now College of Nursing and Healthcare Innovation, at 78 years old, after 13 years teaching at ASU.