After leaving the LSE Valerie taught social psychology for twenty six years at Goldsmiths, University of London, specialising in social influence and social development. Her 1974 survey report on attitudes of a wide sample of local residents to re-development plans for the Camberwell Green area successfully helped to modify those plans. It also reflected her interest in housing issues which currently continues through involvement with CHT. She was awarded a Commonwealth Fellowship at the University of the West Indies Trinidad campus to further her work on the development of prosocial behaviour. 

After leaving Goldsmiths she lived in Nairobi for seventeen years where she continued to write occasionally. Having studied singing for many years, including at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, most of her time in Kenya was taken up in extensive involvement with the growing world of classical music there, especially with young Kenyan singers, musicians and music teachers. She chaired the Nairobi Music Society for fifteen years, also chairing Nairobi Orchestra and serving on the Council of the Kenya Conservatoire of Music. In 2003 she was asked by a trustee of Harambee Schools Kenya to arrange a large fund-raising concert in All Saints Cathedral, Nairobi. In addition to the solo, choral and instrumental works she planned, she was asked to include a visiting musician, an amateur organist and professional surveyor based in the UK called  Clifford Dann! She chaired the Commonwealth Housing Mutual Help Group (CHG) from its inception until she returned to the UK in 2016.