Alia Eyres is the CEO of Mother’s Choice, a charity originally established by her parents and their friends that helps girls and young women in crisis through residential services, counselling, sex education workshops, adoption, and financial support. These days the group, founded in 1987 in response to a spike in teen pregnancies, employs 150 staff and 800 volunteers, who each year care for 150 children, assist more than 700 girls and young women experiencing crisis pregnancies, and provide sex education to more than 5,000 students.

Born and raised in Hong Kong, she is the eldest of seven kids and has seven children herself. She has been volunteering for Mother’s Choice since childhood, but didn’t think of working for the organisation professionally until she returned to Hong Kong, after working as an M&A lawyer for Hogan Lovells in Hong Kong and Skadden in New York, and found herself searching for a greater sense of purpose. She is also chair of the Elliott School of International Affairs at George Washington University in the US and is on the board of advisors of the Hong Kong International Montessori School.

(Photo: Alex Maeland)