Joan Holt is a Deputy General Manager within Curriculum Corporation. Joan began her career as a secondary teacher of English and History in the western suburbs of Melbourne. She spent a year working in a chemical plant on the Teacher Release to Industry Program and then managed that project, and others in the VET area, for the Victorian Department of Education. During that time, Joan worked on a MCEETYA task force and gained a taste for national work. In 1996 she followed this interest and began work for Curriculum Corporation. Since being at Curriculum Corporation Joan has directed a number of significant national projects including Discovering Democracy, a civics and citizenship education project. Joan established the Assessment Services unit which led the Corporation to provide services in both formative assessment and whole cohort jurisdictional testing.

Joan is currently the director of the national collaborative project to achieve greater consistency among the curriculums of the States and Territories in the areas of English, science, mathematics, civics and citizenship and information and communications technologies. Joan has worked in Indonesia supporting the Ministry of Education in the reform of their national curriculum, and is currently working with UNICEF Iran and the Ministry of Education in their plans for the development of a national curriculum. Her particular interests are in the areas of curriculum and assessment.