As the Senior Program Director of Engaged Scholarship, Joanne oversees three programs – the Public Service Scholars Program, the Graduate Public Service Fellowship, and the Community-Based Research Fellowship Program. They also teach two research methods courses that support students with community-based, public, and activist scholarship.

Joanne is in the last weeks of their PhD program in the Critical Studies of Race, Class, and Gender in Education at the University of California, Berkeley. Their research and teaching focuses on how teachers and students navigate the tensions within progressive, critical, and social justice pedagogies, including participatory action research. Before joining the Haas Center, Joanne worked at UC Berkeley's Public Service Center supporting a community-based literacy program. Prior to their work at Berkeley, Joanne taught as an elementary school teacher, and as an undergraduate at Pomona College, Joanne also worked at the Draper Center for Community Partnerships.