Leonard Joy was an economist in academia for 30 years. He held posts at Makerere University College of East Africa, Cambridge, the London School of Economics, the Institute of Development Studies at the University of Sussex, and at the University of California at Berkeley.
He has consulted for the World Bank and other United Nations agencies (FAO, WHO, UNICEF, UNESCO, IFAD, UNDP, ADB, and UNHCHR) as well as USAID, the UK Ministry for Overseas Development, and the Ford and Rockefeller Foundations. He contributed to the development of policy papers, operations manuals, and training programmes (including workshops on governance capacity development, for both high-level government and UNDP officials). Under UNDP auspices, he has had retainer contracts with several governments as a process consultant supporting efforts at governance systems change and systemic governance capacity development.
He is becoming increasingly focused on the understanding of values development and the application of this understanding, especially with regard to the need for values shifts in response to global warming. He has a book in draft tentatively entitled Our Values Will Determine Our Future.