Journo turns a new page with life as transgender

A former editor-in-chief of the South China Morning Post has announced she is transgender, changing her name from Reginald Chua to Gina Chua.

Chua is now the global managing editor of operations at news agency Reuters. She announced her transition through the company's internal email last Friday and the Reuters team webpage has also updated her latest information and photo.

"I'm transgender. And beginning today I'll be living and presenting as what I know to be my true self 100 percent of the time," Chua wrote.

Chua was the editor-in-chief of SCMP from 2009 to 2011. She worked at the Wall Street Journal for 16 years, including as deputy managing editor from 2008 to 2009.

In her email to staff, she said she had been on a mostly "private, internal and exploratory" journey but it is now time to move beyond that to mark a new milestone in her life.

The management at Reuters and Thomson Reuters have been incredibly supportive during her transition, Chua added, vowing that this change won't affect her in doing her job.

"I'm already more focused now that I'm removing a key distraction from my life," Chua wrote. "But in most other respects I'll be doing exactly the same things I was doing before [for better and for worse]."

She ended the email with a quote by American poet EE Cummings: "It takes courage to grow up and become who you really are."

The 30-year veteran journalist is currently based in New York.

She is a native of Singapore and a regular speaker at conferences on trends in journalism.

She has taught graduate and undergraduate level classes at the University of Hong Kong, New York University and Nanyang Technological University in Singapore on the business models of journalism, computer-assisted reporting and numeracy in the newsroom.

This is a first for Hong Kong to have a transgender former local media executive.

Some of the well-known transgender journalists overseas include former Out magazine executive editor Raquel Willis and Meredith Talusan, founding executive editor of Conde Nast's them, a digital magazine for the LGBTQ.

maisy.mok@singtaonewscorp.com