Dr Siska is a US and UK social work educator, teaching research for 26 years at the undergraduate and graduate levels. She was a senior research support specialist for the New York State University School of Medicine (Upstate Medical Center). Her responsibilities included developing research proposals for practitioners and medical residents, managing research personnel, data analysis, program evaluation and development.

Before this, Dr Siska was a research associate at Columbia University School of Social Work. She developed research proposals and managed grants for NIH (National Institutes of Health) federal grants in AIDS research, cancer and behavioural health. As tenured faculty at the University of Missouri at Kansas City, Dr Siska has chaired the Social Science Institutional Review Board for five years and, as chair, reviewed approximately 300 expedited reviews annually. For six years, she served as a member of the Social Care Research Ethics Committee, which reviewed non-NHS research in England and Wales.