Joy Taylor is the Co-Founder and Community Manager of Canvas Coworking in Toowoomba, Queensland, where she provides space for remote workers, freelancers and business owners to connect in an office, away from home.
Through Canvas Coworking and Startup Toowoomba, Joy supports early-stage entrepreneurs by creating a collaborative, community environment and hosting programs designed to develop skills, behaviours and connections.
Joy is the Program Director for the FLAIR Incubator, a four-month program that seeks to support Female-Led, Aspiring to be International, Regional-based startups and businesses.
As the Program Director for the Zero to Startup program, Joy is actively engaged with motivated migrants on their journey to start their own business in Australia, and encouraging them to integrate into the small business community locally.
As the proud mother of two young adult children, Joy has enjoyed developing their love of travel, sharing the experience of new environments, cultures and opportunities to explore over 30 countries around the world.
On realising that one of her children wanted to be a computer game developer, but did not have a peer group of friends to learn with, Joy set up CoderDojo Toowoomba. A club for children to learn how to become creators of technology.
During her long, successful career as a banker, Joy also explored studies in the area of Climatology, and has since become part of the Climate Reality Leadership Corps. Her efforts extend to the work she does with entrepreneurs, encouraging them to focus on a triple bottom line approach, of People, Planet and Profit.
On weekends you will often find Joy and her partner, David out recharging their souls by hiking and camping in the beautiful Australian bush, or at home, cooking up healthy, keto-inspired meals for the week ahead.
To strengthen ties between entrepreneurs across Australia and internationally, Joy is an active member of the Coworking Alliance of Asia Pacific; a Techstars Startup Weekend Global Facilitator; a Startup Catalyst Community Leader and inaugural Venturer with Qld’s Office of the Chief Entrepreneur.
In partnership with the University of Southern Queensland, Joy mentored for the DFAT Australian Awards Fellowship, supporting female entrepreneurs in Nepal, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka.
In mid 2020, Joy was successful in gaining a place in the She Codes Plus - Brisbane cohort. This six-month program gives 20 women the opportunity to learn together, as they work through the fun and frustrations of learning to code in HTML, CSS, Javascript, Django and React, with the support of industry mentors and expert facilitators. The program has been supported by BHP and Spacecubed (Perth).
Learning to create with technology is a skill that Joy intends to develop into a career as a Software Engineer, using this knowledge to work with other like-minded people from around the world to create solutions to problems that she cares about, such as the education of women & girls, animal welfare and human impact on the environment.
