Joy L. Chia is the Executive Director of the Astraea Lesbian Foundation for Justice, a public foundation rooted in LGBTQI communities and movements working globally to advance the rights of LGBTQI people and communities. Astraea endeavors to mobilize and distribute resources so as to reach the activists and communities who need them most and who are best positioned to make transformational impact over time.
Joy comes to Astraea from the Open Society Foundations (OSF), where she was the Team Manager with the Women’s Rights Program and led its work on “Power of the Collective” which supports feminist activism, community mobilization and advocacy to be more independent, resilient, vibrant, and inclusive. From 2012-2018, Joy was the OSF East Asia program officer and led the program’s grant-making portfolios on equality and human rights in East Asia (including disability rights, LGBTQI+ rights, and women’s rights).
She has also held fellowships and taught international human rights law and practice at institutions in the United States and in Hong Kong, including the Chinese University of Hong Kong, University of Hong Kong and at Fordham Law School, where she was the 2010-2012 Asia Law and Justice Fellow at the Leitner Center for International Law and Justice. Joy is a graduate of Yale University and Columbia University School of Law. Joy’s publications include the co-edited volume Gender, Violence and the State in Asia (July 2016, Routledge) and scholarly articles on human rights in Asia.
