Jolie spent five years working for New Zealand Red Cross after the earthquakes in Christchurch - firstly leading the psychosocial recovery programmes for the recovery team in Canterbury, then working to inform recovery preparedness and practice both nationally and internationally.
Jolie was awarded a Winston Churchill Fellowship in 2013 to explore strategies for supporting those who are working and living in disaster recovery – community leaders, volunteers, frontline workers in community-facing organisations...
Jolie studied cognitive psychology and through her career has worked in community development in a range of sectors including the disability sector, community-based mental health and the older person's sector.
Jolie, like many Cantabrians, was working, volunteering, and raising two children when the earthquakes changed life as she knew it. A natural progression was made from volunteering after the September and February earthquakes in Canterbury to pitching in and helping as part of the Red Cross recovery team.
Jolie' s focus is now on finding ways to integrate local learning with international knowledge and to ensure that the experience of communities in Greater Christchurch is valued and informs responses to future disasters.
During her time working on disaster recovery, Jolie had the realisation that helping one person, one community, one disaster at a time was no longer enough, Jolie and her Co-founder Elizabeth McNaughton, therefore, established Hummingly. A company that has created easy to use resilience tools that people, communities and workplaces the world over can access.