Getting to Know Joanna Travis-Roberts Pt.1

Building the Future Together: Joanna Travis-Roberts on 10 Years of ISSUP

A special three-part series celebrating 10 years of the International Society of Substance Use Professionals (ISSUP).  

In this first episode, host Associate Professor Goodman Sibeko speaks with Joanna Travis-Roberts, ISSUP’s Chief Executive. Joanna shares how an unexpected opportunity shifted her path from literature and languages to leading a global community focused on substance use prevention, treatment, and recovery. Together, they discuss the serendipitous moments, mentors, and experiences that shaped her career and her passion for making evidence-based knowledge accessible worldwide.

This conversation goes beyond Joanna’s career story. It provides a behind-the-scenes look at the values and motivations driving ISSUP, including transparent leadership, mentorship, and connecting people with knowledge and expertise. She shares the lessons, inspirations, and challenges that have shaped her journey, as well as the inspiration she draws from ISSUP members and the impact of their work. The episode offers a candid and inspiring perspective on leading and innovating in a constantly evolving field, making it a must-listen for anyone interested in global substance use work, leadership, and creating real-world impact.

Featured Voices 

Host – A/Prof. Goodman Sibeko 

ISSUP Global Scientific Advisor.

Head of Addiction Psychiatry, University of Cape Town.

LinkedIn: goodmansibeko

Twitter/X: @profgsibeko

Guest – Joanna Travis-Roberts 

Chief Executive of ISSUP

Learn more about Joanna on issup.net

Time Stamps

Professor Goodman Sibeko (00:01)
Hello and welcome to the special podcast series celebrating 10 years of the International Society of Substance Use Professionals, otherwise known as ISSUP.

I'm Goodman Sibeko the ISSUP Global Scientific Advisor and your host. You can find me on LinkedIn and all the socials at the handle of [at] profg [dot] sibeko (of[at]profg[dot]sibeko). You can find ISSUP on LinkedIn, X and Blue Sky. Just type in ISSUP and you'll find us easily. 

Over three episodes, we will explore the journey of ISSUP. We're going to look at its origins, its milestones, and dream a little bit about the future to the eyes of one of its foundational leaders, Joanna Travis Roberts. Now, Joanna Travis Roberts is the chief executive of ISSUP where she leads the organisation's governance, operations, stakeholder engagement, and strategic direction. With a background in literature, languages and marketing, she's worked in the substance use disorder field since 2001, across research, communications, e-learning and international project management. Now her early work with the MENTOR Foundation and the UNODC led to the development of an online portal for evidence-based prevention, really laying the foundation for further innovations like Prevention Smart e-course.

Joanna also brings on the ground experience having led a rural UK prevention pilot and managed international fundraising events. Her career has focused on making evidence-based knowledge accessible and usable globally, principles she now applies in leading ISSUP's global reach and impact. In this first episode, before we dive into the organisational history, let's get to know Joanna Travis Roberts.

Joanna has been central to ISSUP's growth from vision to global community. So let's dive in. Joanna, it's wonderful to have you with us on ISSUP exchange, finally to have the boss with us. So perhaps to get us going, could you perhaps share with us your background and what initially drew you to substance use prevention, treatment, and recovery as a professional focus?

Joanna Travis-Roberts (01:51)
Thank you, Goodman. It is wonderful to be here. This is such an exciting piece of work and I'm thrilled to be part of the podcast today and to be talking to you. So thank you. My background, what initially drew me? It's somewhat my what drew me and somewhat down to the universe of how I ended up working in this field. As you mentioned in my introduction, my studies were not in this area. I did English and French literature as my degree at university and I was going to be a teacher. I always wanted to be a teacher. I was very focused on that as a career and so I followed the subjects that I loved, went to university, did those and then was going to do my postgraduate teaching certification but I had a break.

So there was a pause between the end of my degree and the start of my teacher certificate. And I was just doing sort of pieces of work that I could make some money during those few months that I had a break. And a friend of the family said, I'm doing a research piece where I'm talking to people in all different countries to find out about their prevention work. And we're having real difficulty getting to some of the French speaking African communities and workforce. How do you feel about just doing some interviews? And of course, this is back in 2001. So we were not doing everything via email. It was a lot of on the phone, a lot of fax, backwards and forwards. And he said, could you come and do things that we want in French for us? So I said, yeah. Great, sounds much more interesting than the, I think I was a secretary or something like that at the time. And so I said, yes, that sounds fantastic. In those few months that I was waiting then to take up my place, I absolutely loved it and met so many different people, was fascinated by the prevention stories and the prevention work I was hearing about and actually what that turned into is that I was gathering pieces of information and stories for the Green Book, which is the first UNODC book they did on prevention success stories around the world.

So we gathered hundreds and hundreds of these prevention stories and initiatives and people that were experts were analysing them and looking at what worked. But I was really interested in all of it. And we had so much data. There was only 12 stories published in the book, or 12 or 16, but we had so much data at that point that then that we started to talk about what can we do with it. We turned it into this online portal of things showing points of evidence in prevention. And I was hooked, absolutely hooked. The start date came for my teacher training course and I didn't go.

And I stayed in that job at an organisation called MENTOR Foundation and got into the prevention world. And it was not delivering prevention, it was all about tools and resources to help people do effective prevention. So it was very much in line with what we've continued to develop and how I've worked throughout my career. But yes, it was the universe intervening that took me on a parallel path. So, despite all the things I thought I wanted to do, this was actually what I wanted to do. And at one point I even went back and did a postgraduate diploma in marketing because this idea of communicating with people, making information accessible, helping people find out what the evidence, what the research says, was so interesting to me. So I really sort of went down that road a lot more.

Professor Goodman Sibeko (05:44)
I love that idea of parallel parts. It's really, think, a story which is shared by so many of the staff at ISSUP and really indicates a really nice mix of preparedness and opportunity, doesn't it? With obviously that cozy, comfortable mix of serendipity. And I think it's really, wonderful how that can all lead to a journey of discovery of internal skills and strengths.

And so you find new ways to extend yourself into a space that you suddenly develop all this interest in. So within this journey, who or what would you say has most inspired and mentored you along this. 

Joanna Travis-Roberts (06:18)
There's lots of people and I think you're so right that much of the direction I grew in was because I discovered a space or a strength there that I didn't know was within me. So sometimes that was situational, sometimes it was people that said, you know, this looks like it's good, why don't you give it a try or even things why don't you give this a try and I went no that's dreadful I'm terrible at it I can't possibly do that so it so much the people, definitely I couldn't say without mentioning Jeff Lee, who was working with ISSUP until he retired last year. And we obviously very sadly lost Jeff earlier this year, but Jeff was the person that offered me that first job. So he opened that first door. He was the person that introduced me to this whole field.

But it didn't stop there. He was the one that has sort of supported and helped me grow, given me opportunities. Jeff would never keep things behind a closed door. So if he was going to a board meeting, he would discuss how he was preparing for it. If he was looking at finances, he would discuss it with me. You know, he had everything very transparent so that I could learn from it and go along for a lot of incredible experiences. He also showed me that you can effectively be someone's manager and their friend. So I haven't ever seen that problem when I've managed other people. And I think Jeff really set the blueprint for that in how to build teams and bring the best out in people. That you can be their friend and their boss and the two things don't have to clash.

Professor Goodman Sibeko (08:04)
That sounds great. And I think really we find ourselves in such an evolving field. There's always new evidence being generated. There's new substances that are being discovered, novel, and now increasingly synthetics as well, new threats from the flows of drugs around the world. So really grabbing those opportunities for development, you could argue, comes part and parcel of what we do, doesn't it? I really love the idea of that transparent sort of leadership with, you know, transparent mentorship and leadership by example. And of course the idea that professionals can be friends, because I feel like that's what it feels like to work at ISSUP. It feels like hanging out with your friends and doing some really incredible work. On a personal level, what would you say motivates you personally to continue working in the field? Now we know how you got here, so what's keeping you here?

Joanna Travis-Roberts (08:52)
Yes, there's lots of things that personally motivate me. I absolutely love my job. So that really helps to go to work every morning and be motivated to do things that I really do love what I do and I love the people that we do it with. And I really see why we do it from the people that we do it for. I also am very driven by how much impact we can have by communicating things and making things accessible. So that need and it's something again that came from the very, very beginning of my career of working with all of these amazing researchers and scientists and seeing all of this evidence emerge.

And then the next day going and visiting an initiative and realised none of what the people that are talking about it, researching it, studying it, are talking about, was in any of the work that we saw on the ground or in the heads of the people that were doing that work. So I was originally driven and continue to be driven by that need to make things accessible. I think I said always admits we don't have all of the information, we're not the creators of all the information, we don't hold all the answers, but we can probably tell you someone who does and we can make the information that we're aware of accessible, open in multiple formats, so that however you want to learn about it there'll be a way of finding that out through ISSUP and that is really important to me and I think it's needed and sometimes overlooked.

Like I say, when I was working with universities that were doing these incredible pieces of research that then sat on a shelf. So I think it's really important to keep being that role. And again, I suppose it's the things that I've studied in communications and things like that that help and the team that we have that are really very good at that, keeping the information flowing.

Another thing is our very inspirational members. You know, I'm incredibly lucky in the work that I do that when it's face to face, we can meet people that are ISSUP members, we can talk to them online, we hear from them via all sorts of channels and emails and social media and things to hear what they're doing and to know that they appreciate what we're doing and that it's having an impact in the work that they do.

It's hugely motivating, I think, for all of us to see that there are success stories and there is impact happening and that the work that is so important with the target group, with the people on the ground, with the client, with the families, with the communities, that that's actually filtering through to that is hugely inspiring when we hear from our members.

Professor Goodman Sibeko (11:44)
Yeah, you know, there's the saying that if you love what you do, you'll never work a day in your life. And I must say, it definitely feels that way for us. You know, we look forward to engaging and to meeting and to designing new interventions and to recording podcasts. So it's all good.

I think you're right, being able to see the impact to be able to see our network grow. And when we all get together for events to actually see the membership interact, it really gives one a sense of achievement and inspires one to keep evolving, doesn't it? It's wonderful.

Joanna Travis-Roberts (12:14)
And it keeps us on our toes and down to earth. It keeps us real in terms of what we're doing and why and what people need and to keep altering our outputs and how we do things to respond to what those needs are. I think it's really great to hear from people.

Professor Goodman Sibeko (12:33)
I like what you said about the fact that we don't have all the answers, but we're able to connect people to people who might have some of the answers and some answers that might apply to them in context that we might not have thought about before. So that humility really comes from genuinely, we don't know everything, but we'll do our best to bring people together so they can find it together. Are there any particular experiences or moments that have shaped your approach? I mean, we've spoken about your journey, professionally, academically and serendipitously. In addition to some of that, are there any particular experiences or moments that you feel have shaped your approach to global collaboration?

Joanna Travis-Roberts (13:10)
There's many and I, you know, there's probably lots of things that I've forgotten along the way as well. I think when I was at Mentor, it was a small organisation. So there was a few of us doing, a real variety of work and that was very grounding. And I had some very amusing experiences of being the person. So we had some royalty on our board. So I would be the person that would sit at the logistics and try and support them. So that would be things like meeting them if they're coming out of a hotel and then going with them to wherever you were having a meeting, but they would travel separately to me. So I would sort of see them into a car and then have to get in a taxi and overtake them to greet them again at the next place because we didn't have enough staff. You know, we had to do everything and I would be the one doing something like that.

And then I would be making teas and coffees for meetings. And then I'd go in and present one of the projects that I was also working on. And it was incredibly grounding to have that finger in so many pies and to have that variety in your day-to-day. And quite funny to sort of take on so many roles. So that I think has always stayed with me and I find it really important still at ISSUP to one day be looking at strategy and development of the organisation and then the next writing a social media post or you know maybe changing some of the copy on the website. You know some of those things I still have my fingers on the pulse of the sort of very practical outputs and I really like that having the variety of tasks and engagements and again, keeping you humble, not getting sort of carried away with lofty ideas of what a leader should be and still understanding what everybody does in a day to day. So I had lots of experiences of that. Another thing that I think is quite fundamental to how I operate, which is just trying to put myself in other people's shoes.

And that you learn in many ways and sometimes unpleasant ways of, you know, being really screamed at 10 minutes before our gala dinner started because I'd done the seating plan wrong in someone's opinion. And, know, that was such a shock to me, but then going away and thinking, okay, well, what was, you know, what was going on for them? Why did they react like that? And obviously the stress of a situation at that point was on their shoulders and they didn't handle it very well. But to try and always put myself in the shoes of whomever I'm talking to. And I think that that is very key in terms of our team, but also the work that we do. I think everyone in ISSUP is very good at that, thinking about ultimately why they're doing things and the person they're interacting with, collaborating with, delivering interventions to make so that has quite a big impact. But like I say sometimes was learnt the hard way. I think another thing that really matters a huge amount to me is the team. Like you said we have a great time doing the job that we do and I always I hope, maybe they'll be listening and thinking, well, that's not always true. But I hope that they always feel that they can tell me something because I would never expect to be able to know what everyone's job is and what the best way to do different ISSUP things would be. To have a really strong, humble team around ISSUP's operation and listening to them. I think is definitely a huge key part of ISSUP a key thing for me and one of the reasons why I do love to go to work every morning because the team is so good.

Professor Goodman Sibeko (17:07)
It's really wonderful to be able to look back on the journey, isn't it? And start, sometimes when you're in the moment, when you're starting at an organisation, sometimes you're not really sure you're doing the right thing or that you know what you're doing. And then years later you realise, now that's sort of curve I had to go through. I had to learn all that so that I could develop all of these new internal skills that I now use in my current. So that's, really great that the Mentor foundation was so formative for you. And really speaking to that development of interpersonal style and learning from the receiving end. I think when you really begin to learn what it feels like to receive certain kinds of feedback, so it's a painful but really helpful way to learn what not to do. And that broader experience, I always say to my team, I'm not gonna ask you to do something I don't know how to do. And it's actually, think such an important part of leadership is to be able to have broader concept of what's happening in the organisation. And with ISSUP, we see that, you know, all of us do a little bit of everything and we all sort of work really well together. So I think you can check yourself as having succeeded, in creating that ISSUP. So in terms of, if we had to think about defining moments, know, Oprah talks about the aha moment. What were some of your early aha moments in your career? And while you think about that, have there been any new ones?

Joanna Travis-Roberts (18:10)
Um. Ah-ha moments. Like I say, probably many. I think a couple of times seeing people that you would put on a real pedestal be very open and truthful about failure. And Jeff definitely did that with me, but other people as well that were around me was very telling. I think imposter syndrome is a thing that we can probably all relate to a little bit and I definitely have felt it over the years and feel it still but when I sort of try and remember and think about someone like Jeff who would admit if there was a failure somewhere along the line and accept that imperfection is part of all of us. I think that was really important to me. I still would say that it's one of the battles, but knowing that I've seen other people make mistakes and admit to them and have shortcomings and work around them on a daily basis, it's definitely, it's not really one aha moment that I've described, but it's, you know, a series of aha moments that I go back to regularly in my sort of day-to-day work.

Professor Goodman Sibeko (19:42)
That sounds great. And know, when you spoke about experts being truthful about failure, you know, I think, you know, we're learning a lot at the moment. We're learning a lot this year. But one of the things that I used to love that Oprah spoke about was how she would have the most knowledgeable expert on her show. And at the end of the show, the expert would say, that okay? And I find that even today, if I host a webinar, if I...have somebody on a panel, somebody who is world renowned expert in something will come to me and say, was that okay? And I find myself doing the same thing. And it's an overlap of humility, which I think is wonderful. This idea we're not infallible, that we can still make errors, that we can still learn, we can still grow and evolve along with that imposter syndrome. So it's a very interesting growth point. So thank you for sharing that.

You, so, how have you experiences shaped your approach in your view in leadership and in the advisory roles that you hold today? I think you've alluded to some of it already. So I think what will be really interesting for us to hear is especially about the advisory role. So you've spoken about leadership, about driving an organisation forward, about driving how the team interacts. is everything culminated in how you provide advice, support?

Joanna Travis-Roberts (20:55)
Yes, it's a good question because I still am surprised when anybody asks me, to be the advisor or to give guidance is still a little bit of a surprise. So I would probably enter into every conversation thinking, well, I might not be able to actually do much here. But I'm surprised often by my real world experiences and how they are as valuable as somebody's lifelong research, for example. This happened just last week in an advisory committee and I looked at the names and I thought, well, that's not going to be very much for me to say, there? Knowing, you know, there's these titans from our field doing the advising. And I thought, well, this would be a quiet couple of hours for me. But actually there's sometimes a gap in real life and perhaps some pragmatic practical application that I can fill. So that I think is perhaps you're giving me a lesson for me that I should see that that might be as valuable as sort of different types of knowledge. But I think that the way that I would like to see things practically achieved then can be applied to give people advice and support or guidance in perhaps a more realistic way. So that is definitely something that I can see that has evolved again from all of these little bits of experiences and processes that we've talked about, things that I've seen that have worked. And because I've been in the application of so many of these processes, if I'm ever giving advice or leading on anything, again, just go back to being in the other person's position because I was there like five minutes ago, you know, maybe it was 15 years, but in my head, it feels like five minutes and it's, you know, you don't forget what it's like to be in those positions. So having that real world practical application of things. I think it's definitely something that I need to remember is valuable.

Professor Goodman Sibeko (23:12)
You know, I was having an existential crisis as one does. And I was having a really good conversation with a good friend of ours, Dr. Jane Marie Ongolo. And she said to me, Goodman, remember that regardless of your qualifications and your education, that the most important skills you bring are you. That all of the things that you bring from life experience and from real world experience and from pragmatic having rolled out and designed interventions, that's all part of what you bring. So she says never sell yourself short. So it's a very important lesson to every now and then sit back and look at the 15 minutes. Yeah, actually, there's more to me than just my degree.

Joanna Travis-Roberts (23:53)
Absolutely. And luckily there is more to me because I'm not sure French and English literature would be doing very much good at this point. But Kim Johnson, who used to be the leader of ICUDDR, said exactly the same to me. We were at a panel and we're sitting next to each other and I'm again thinking, and she said, don't be ashamed that your skills are not academic skills in this field. The point is you're listening to all the academic, it's not like you're overriding those people's voices but the skills that you do have are valid as well and have a place so I try and hear her voice if I am doubting my role in things.

Professor Goodman Sibeko (24:31)
It's really interesting as well because, we consider the ISSUP community to be quite broad. So we have specialists, have policymakers, we have medical doctors, we have non-specialist workers. So to really say to them, you bring a certain level of expertise, but there's a greater value in what you bring in terms of your exposure, your knowledge, and in what you can do in your space. So it's really great that we can model that as well to say, I don't know everything. I don't have everything, but I have something to offer.

Joanna Travis-Roberts (25:01)
And we really put that into ISSUP's approach as well, that we would value if we were, say, building a group of experts, you would say, okay, well, let's not just go on academic achievement here. Let's also look at experience and real-world application or whenever I introduce ISSUP and talk about who we are and who we are for, I always make sure to say, look, we are...as equally here for a volunteer or a person that has no experience or knowledge in this area as we are with someone who spent their whole career studying it because there's not a right or a wrong person that's doing this work and having that mindset. We had it again talking about different training approaches.

Do you set a standard that people that are attending a training course should have, you know, a certain amount of experience and yes, for some training, of course you need some prerequisites, but if I was ever saying, right, this is the suite of trainings that we want to have, I would always be thinking of where do you also start in that initial, for that initial step for the person with no background, no experience so that they...we include everybody in this spectrum of what ISSUP provides.

Professor Goodman Sibeko (26:22)
Joanna, thank you. It's been wonderful having you with us today. And that was an inspiring conversation with Joanna. Getting to know the journey that's shaped her and informed her career from a background in literature and global prevention projects to leading ISSUP. Her story reflects the kind of passion and purpose that drives real change. In episode two in this series, we're going to shift the focus to the organisation Joanna's helped shape from the ground up. We're going to explore the founding of ISSUP, how it all began, who came to the table, and how a vision for global collaboration in substance use practice became a reality. Join us for the second episode.

Thank you for spending this time with us. We hope you enjoy that as much as we did. Be sure to hop on over to our website, issup.net, where you'll find information on how to sign up for free membership. Take care and catch you on the next one.

(END)

About the ISSUP Exchange 

The ISSUP Exchange podcast series explores the evolution of responses to the challenges of substance use—from research and training to ethics, quality standards and evidence-based practice. We connect the dots so you can see the big picture. 

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About ISSUP 

ISSUP is a global network that unites, connects, and shares knowledge across the substance use prevention, treatment, and recovery support workforce. Our mission is to make our members’ work as effective as possible—by providing access to training, resources, and a vibrant professional community.