Jo Porter Announced As CEO Of The Queen Victoria Women's Centre Trust

The Queen Victoria Women's Trust, led by Chair Van Badham, is pleased to announce the appointment of Jo Porter as CEO of the Trust. The announcement precedes a very busy period for the organisation, which includes a free lunchtime conversation with Leta Hong Fincher, award-winning author of Betraying Big Brother: The Feminist Awakening in China, as well as further celebrations to mark International Women's Day on March 6, 7 and 8.

"As Chair of the Queen Victoria Women's Centre Trust, I am very happy to announce the appointment of Jo Porter as the Centre's new CEO. Jo is a dynamic and imaginative cultural leader whose international experience and local passion brings fantastic, fresh energy to the role. With her at the helm, we are ambitious to realise the potential of the QVWC to become a cultural icon of the city, a place to be mentioned alongside the like of the State Library, Malthouse, NGV and Wheeler Centre as one of Melbourne's unique treasures," said Van Badham, Chair, Queen Victoria Women's Centre Trust.

Jo's first event at the helm has been developing a program for International Women's Day consisting of three elements including Leta Hong Fincher, author of Betraying Big Brother: The Feminist Awakening in China, featuring in a free lunchtime conversation with Bhakthi Puvanenthiran, Associate Editor of crikey.com on March 6.

On the eve of International Women's Day in 2015, the Chinese government arrested five feminist activists and jailed them for 37 days. The Feminist Five became a global cause célèbre, with Hillary Clinton speaking out on their behalf, and activists inundating social media with #FreetheFive messages. But the Feminist Five are only symbols of a much larger feminist movement of university students, civil rights lawyers, labour activists, performance artists and online warriors that is prompting an unprecedented awakening among China's urban, educated women. In Betraying Big Brother, journalist and scholar Leta Hong Fincher argues that the popular, broad-based movement poses a unique challenge to China's authoritarian regime today.

Leta Hong Fincher has written for the New York Times, Washington Post, The Guardian, Dissent Magazine, Ms. Magazine, BBC, CNN and others. She won the Society of Professional Journalists Sigma Delta Chi award for her China reporting. Fluent in Mandarin, Leta is the first American to receive a Ph.D. from Tsinghua University's Department of Sociology in Beijing. She has a master's degree from Stanford University and a bachelor's degree with high honours from Harvard University.