J. Joy Davis, Ph.D.
J. Joy Davis
- B.A., Communication Studies, University of North Carolina at Charlotte (2006)
- M.B.A., Kaplan University (2014)
- Ph.D., Curriculum and Instruction, Urban Education, University of North Carolina at Charlotte (2025)
Dr. J. Joy Davis is an Assistant Teaching Professor of Business Communication in the Department of Communication Studies and Affiliate Faculty in Women’s and Gender Studies at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. She teaches COMM3160 – Business Communication and has taught additional interdisciplinary courses in COMM, WGST, and CHES. Before academia, Dr. Davis spent more than 15 years in business development and organizational leadership, bringing industry expertise to her teaching and scholarship.
Her research informs her teaching practice and maps the intersections of social class, social stratification, and high-achieving women’s identities and epistemologies, focusing on women’s socioeconomic mobility, the reconceptualization of academic achievement in higher education, and women’s high-achieving identities through her conceptual framework, High Achieving Woman Identity (HAWI), with specific interest in the ways African American women experience achievement, identity, and mobility in academic spaces.
Davis was a Carver and Cloninger Oral History Research Fellow (2024) and an AACTE Holmes Scholar (2025). She is the author of several publications, having contributed to publishers such as Routledge, Palgrave Macmillan (Springer Nature), Black Lawrence Press, and Lexington Books, and is currently co-authoring an upcoming manuscript under contract with Cognella Press (2027).