Joanna has a long-standing association with the hospitality industry.  Starting with weekend and holiday jobs as a food and beverage attendant while still at school back in her native UK, and progressing to working in bars and nightclubs while completing her Business Management degree in Birmingham and working as a graduate management trainee in London.

On emigrating to Australia Joanna decided on a change of career and founded an outside catering business, Food with Relish, which catered for private and commercial clients including Westpac Bank, Fuji Xerox, Columbia Tristar Productions and Australian Rugby.  She and her team catered for events throughout the Sydney area, including on Shark Island, at Vaucluse House and in the Royal Botanic Gardens.  They also provided green room catering to outside events such as the Homebake and Hemispheres music festivals in Sydney.  

Some highlights of Joanna’s time with her catering business include catering for the likes of Gough and Margaret Whitlam, Kim Beazley and INXS and backstage drinks with Siouxie Q.

During this time, Joanna completed her Commercial Cookery qualifications at East Sydney TAFE, and after selling the business, she worked as Head Chef of Blue Orange Café in Bondi and Pastry Chef at the 2 hatted Catalina Restaurant in Rose Bay.

Joanna was approached by City East Community College to develop and deliver a range of cookery classes for the school.  Inspired by this experience, Joanna completed her Training and Assessment qualifications and gained a position as a Commercial Cookery Teacher at NSW TAFE. She subsequently completed her Graduate Diploma in Vocational and Workplace Learning at University of Technology Sydney, specialising in e-Learning and program design.

In 2011 Joanna relocated to Queensland to take up a position as a Hospitality Trainer at South Queensland Institute of TAFE in Toowoomba, where she also completed a Diploma of Hospitality and a Certificate III in Patisserie and worked part time at Wendland Fine Foods, a local café and delicatessen.

Now based just outside Brisbane, Joanna joined Allara Learning as a contract writer in 2016 and came on board as a permanent member of the team in 2018.  Her wide-ranging experience in the hospitality and vocational education industries has equipped Joanna with a unique set of capabilities in designing and developing learning and assessment resources tailored to the needs of our many and varied clients and learner cohorts.