Dr. Joiselle Smith

Creative | Traveler | Polyglot

Role: I am CEO of Pathways to Creative Industries and Residency Ecosystem Director of New Seneca Village. I am a healer and creative who works at the intersection of ancestral remembrance and nervous-system restoration.

At New Seneca Village, I design and lead residencies that invite villagers into deep rest, regulation, and reconnection. Through somatic practices, prayer, and time in relationship with place, I build a steady and intentional container where safety, visioning, and collective healing can emerge. On the land, villagers are supported in returning to themselves, listening inward, and restoring. Beyond the residency, I continue to tend to the village through virtual points of connection that support integration and coherence.

Joiselle is a healer, creative, and leadership strategist working at the intersection of executive wellness, organizational transformation, and conscious organizational practice. Through creative and embodied practices, she builds transformative containers where restoration gives rise to clarity, imagination, and aligned action. Her insights on leadership, healing, and systems change have been published in Harvard Business Review, Harvard Education Press, and other international journals and publications. She has led organizations in Europe, Latin America and the United States.

She studied Public Policy and Economics at Duke University, where she received the Reginaldo Howard Memorial Scholarship for academic excellence, and earned her doctorate from Harvard’s Graduate School of Education. Her work is rooted in the belief that when the nervous system is resourced and our sovereignty is honored, individuals and communities can remember how to move, dream, and heal together.

Get to Know Joiselle

How do you envision the future when our restorative vision is realized?

am inspired by a vision of a world where self-actualization is not a privilege, but a normal and supported part of life and where healing and restoration are accessible, culturally relevant, and integrated into how we live and work.

I believe the systems we’ve inherited have taught us to prioritize extraction over care, productivity over presence, and performance over connection. My work emerged from knowing that these ways of working and relating are no longer sustainable for our bodies, our organizations, or the planet. I transform how we work, lead, and exist together, toward models rooted in restoration, nervous-system health, and shared humanity.

I am inspired by the possibility of a healed and healthy planet, where people are resourced enough to imagine, collaborate, and create from wholeness rather than depletion. This work is an offering toward a future where our inner lives, our relationships, and our collective systems.

What personal practices ground you when doing restorative or visionary work?

Meditation and prayer are foundational practices that ground me in both stillness and clarity.

Beyond meditation, I am grounded by practices that restore the nervous system and return me to relationships, with breath, land, and rhythm. These practices remind me that visionary and restorative work must be rooted in embodiment, regulation, and care.

When I am resourced in this way, I am able to lead from coherence rather than urgency, and to hold spaces where others can safely slow down, reconnect, and imagine new ways of being together.

And, I also love a good nap!

I Am From poem

I am from trees nestled in between the sea breeze

Found bathing in the hot sun, with coconuts at my feet

I am from Amanda, Edith, Gwendolyn and Lorna

Expert cooking, fashionistas and strength beyond this world.

I am from a place for transformation, hard truths across time

Found in the stars, carried by the cosmos and wrapped in love.

I am from the divine mother, the cosmic womb and Mitochondrial Eve

From where we began, where we triumphed and where we fell short or tried again

And when I return home, I will recall being from here, there and everywhere

Looking at ripples of love and Joi. Waves of crashing perseverance and wisdom.

I will see my vacation home. I’ll smile and say, “Wow.”

And my hammock will be waiting somewhere nearby