Joan Skinner has been a midwife since gaining her registration at St Helens Hospital Wellington in 1976. She has worked in small birth units and hospitals; been a homebirth midwife and a lead maternity carer; managed a major hospital tertiary delivery unit and a postnatal ward; and worked in a community-owned health service in a high-needs community and in an iwi health service.
After gaining her PhD in midwifery in 2005 she was a senior lecturer at the Graduate School of Nursing, Midwifery and Health at Te Herenga Waka Victoria University of Wellington. Within Aotearoa New Zealand she has provided consultancy services for the Accident Compensation Corporation, the Health and Disability Commissioner, several district health boards, the Ministry of Health and the coroner. Internationally she has had been a consultant for the World Health Organization, the United Nations Population Fund and the United States Agency for International Development, mainly in the Asia Pacific region.
In 2020 she completed a master’s degree in creative writing from the International Institute of Modern Letters at Te Herenga Waka Victoria University of Wellington.
Joan lives in Korokoro, Wellington, with her husband Peter Glensor. They have a merged family of six children and eleven grandchildren.
