He took a first class honours degree in History at Jesus College, Oxford in 2016, and received his MPhil from the University of Cambridge in 2017. After graduating, Joel worked as an advisor to Rory Stewart MP from 2018-2020, an editor at Foreign Affairs, and as the Director of European Policy at an AI think-tank in Washington, D.C.
In 2020, Joel won a Kennedy Scholarship to study at Harvard. Conscious that he knew nothing about the man the scholarship was named for, he bought Professor Fredrik Logevall's recently published biography, JFK: Coming of Age in the American Century, 1917–1956.
Joel was fascinated by the book's references to Kennedy's interest in Churchill and, after arriving at Harvard in 2021, was fortunate to research the subject under Logevall's supervision. He spent the next five years researching and writing Kennedy's Only Hero, which is his first book. He lives in London.