Jennifer Lu (she/her)

Jennifer is Director for Asia Programs at Outright International. She is a social worker, lesbian feminist, author, and Taiwanese. She has been devoted to LGBT rights and political reform movements for 20 years nationally and internationally. Before joining Outright, she was ED of Taiwan Equality Campaign, known as Marriage Equality Coalition Taiwan – an organization that pushed Marriage Equality in Taiwan.
Jennifer was born in Taipei and had a younger sister who was the most severe heart disease patient. Her younger sister’s struggling life taught her to rethink the most crucial thing in our lives, leading her to join the social movement. She graduated from National Taiwan University with a social worker bachelor and from Sydney University with her policy studies master’s degree.
Jennifer focused on establishing an LGBT community support system, services, and gender equality education for ten years while working with Taiwan Tongzhi Hotline Association. She had over 1,000 speeches, and the number is still increasing nowadays. In January 2016, Jennifer represented the Social Democratic Party and ran for a parliamentary seat in general elections as one of the first lesbian candidates in Taiwan. During her election campaign, she and her team successfully raised the visibility of LGBT issues in politics. They pushed to include equal rights issues and the young generation’s political participation on the agenda of the Taiwan parliament.
When Jennifer was Chief Coordinator of Marriage Equality Coalition Taiwan and Senior Research Fellow at Taiwan Tongzhi(LGBTQ+) Hotline Association, her team organized several successful rallies, one of which was on Human Rights Day in December 2016, in which over 250,000 people stood up to support Marriage Equality. This rally has pushed society to achieve the significant milestone of Marriage Equality in Taiwan.
Jennifer is also on one of the Executive Boards in ILGA Asia and an East Asia representative, trying to build more connections for Asia civil society.