Joen received her Bachelor’s degree in Cultural Geography from UC Berkeley at age 35, where she received an honor’s designation for her thesis analyzing the cultural landscapes of cannabis clubs in the Bay Area. The research was funded by an academic fellowship, so you could say UC Berekely paid her to study pot. Joen lives and writes in San Francisco, blending her love for urban evolution and human culture with travel, and the exploration of emerging art. In the past few years she’s spent time in Paris, Rome, New York, Los Angeles, Ethiopia, Beijing, Shanghai, Tokyo, Dubai and Washington DC. Joen was given her unusual name by her father, who took it from the author of a textbook on Gestalt therapy, and pronounced it incorrectly. He died 19 days later, never getting to experience the awkwardness the legacy of her name gave her.