Jo Hayes is the CEO of Habitat for Humanity Hong Kong, a locally registered non-profit organisation representing the global housing organisation, Habitat for Humanity International. Habitat has a vision of a world where everyone has a decent place to live and since 2004, Habitat has been serving the local community in Hong Kong and raising awareness of housing as a critical foundation to improving lives and tackling intergenerational poverty.
Jo brings twenty-five years of professional experience, expertise in strategy development, operational management, and multi-stakeholder engagement to the role. She particularly enjoys building and empowering high-performing teams, mitigating and managing risk, and applying creative and innovative principles to drive measurable and sustainable change.
Jo’s career spans a range of industries from education and media production with the British Council and BBC Worldwide, to the NGO sector with The Women’s Foundation (TWF). At TWF, Jo led the gender diversity and inclusion programmes, partnerships, and initiatives that support the development of the pipeline of female talent in Hong Kong for executive and non-executive roles. She spearheaded ground-breaking programmes including Male Allies and the Boardroom Series for Women Leaders, a programme that provides board-ready women with further skills, knowledge and connections necessary to facilitate the transition to the boardroom.
Jo is also the co-founder of the volunteer-led initiative Voice for Social Good, a group of NGO women leaders committed to promoting cross-sector collaboration, open exchange and learning to build an inclusive, stronger and resilient non-profit sector to serve the Hong Kong community.
Born in the UK, Jo has lived and worked in Indonesia, Mainland China and France and along with her two teenage children and husband, has called Hong Kong home since 2013.
After completing the OSC/UBS NGO Leadership Programme in 2018, she has served as a speaker for the Programme.
