Joy Kemp is a midwife from the United Kingdom and is currently serving as an International Midwife Specialist with the United Nations in Bangladesh, a climate-vulnerable country where professional midwives have recently been introduced. From 2013-2023 she was Global Professional Advisor for the Royal College of Midwives and had an academic career as a Senior Lecturer, Programme Director, and Researcher, as well as a clinical midwife in the UK. Joy’s humanitarian work spans over three decades, focusing on maternal and newborn health services for vulnerable populations in challenging and fragile settings worldwide.
Joy’s significant contribution to midwifery knowledge includes the capacity-building of professional midwives’ associations, enabling them to develop the organisational structures and systems they need to serve their members and to position and equip midwives for their pivotal role in sexual, reproductive, maternal, newborn and adolescent health and gender equality. Joy is the lead author of the book “Global Midwifery: Principles, Policy and Practice,” and has contributed to many other publications. Joy’s personal experience with dyslexia has led her to take a special interest in supporting neurodiverse midwives and others in achieving career success.
