Jess’s Backstory

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I was born on the Northern Beaches and grew up in Avalon – back when the beaches were a haven for ratbags, filmmakers and eccentrics. My parents, Lynda and Richard, raised my brother Joel and me to question everything and to believe we could be whatever we could imagine. A public education at Avalon Public and Barrenjoey High ingrained in me a deep commitment to egalitarianism, as did my close relationship with my Nonna, the author and advocate Deirdre Hill, who we lived with after losing our home during the 1990s recession.

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From my early teens, I was frustrated by the absence of women’s voices in public life. Determined to change that, I set out to create a magazine called Sheek, which I described as “an intelligent alternative to women’s magazines” – Cosmopolitan meets TIME. Aside from my teenage stint as a middle-distance runner on the 1990s soap opera Breakers, starting that magazine became my singular focus. By 18, I had a publisher, staff and an office – but thanks to circumstances too bizarre to briefly explain, the venture never launched.

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After a couple of years in advertising, I got a job as a travel writer. By the age of 23, when I wasn’t singing with a blues band, I was being flown to luxury retreats and ‘palace’ hotels across the world. But when I found myself sneaking away from the resorts to visit homeless shelters and staying up late with staff to hear about their exploitative working conditions, it was clear my travel-writing caper was over. More interested in injustice than infinity pools, I decided to quit travel writing and become a journalist  - somehow - without a university degree or cadetship.

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On a flight home from a travel jaunt in Mauritius, I decided to 'make myself' an election correspondent – and persuaded my new partner, David, to join me. With support from Marni Cordell, then editor of the independent news site New Matilda, David and I drove from Los Angeles to Chicago, reporting together on the 2007 election campaign that saw Barack Obama elected president. Back in Sydney, I joined ABC Radio Current Affairs as a transcriber, starting work just after 4am, and soon worked my way into researching, producing and reporting under the mentorship of Mark Colvin, Edmond Roy, Eleanor Hall, Kerry O’Brien and many others.

In 2010, as the Arab revolutions began in Tunisia, my colleague Connie Agius and I spearheaded an ambitious project to amplify the voices of Arab citizens who were prepared to risk everything to replace their dictatorships with democracy. From our desks in Sydney, we produced more than 200 original stories, aided by contacts developed through social media and old-school network building. Later that year, I was selected for the Edward R. Murrow Press Fellowship in Washington, where I travelled the States with journalists from across the world, and witnessed the Occupy Wall Street protests up close. Weeks later, I received a call from legendary former Moscow correspondent Monica Attard, inviting me to move to the Middle East to become a correspondent for a new longform current affairs website, The Global Mail. Within a week, I had left my beloved job at the ABC and was on a plane to Cairo with David, where we would live and report for the next six months.

Later, we moved to Beirut, where, under the guidance of my friend and mentor Martin Chulov, David and I travelled across the region, reporting on the aftermath of the Arab revolutions and witnessing the horrifying rise of ISIS. Late that year, in 2012, I had a massive seizure alone on a flight from Yemen to Beirut. A scan revealed something entirely unexpected — a brain tumour that had likely been growing for years.

After surgery in Beirut, I was still recovering when I got the news that my position in the Middle East was being made redundant. Heartbroken, I returned to Sydney, where my colleagues at the ABC helped me get back on my feet.

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Time, as it turned out, was on my side. I joined the ABC’s Religion Unit during a golden era for the department, working alongside the visionary Jane Jeffes, Noel Debien, John Cleary and Andrew West. From there, Background Briefing’s executive producer Chris Bullock brought me on to learn longform investigative radio reporting — which led to my first commission for The Monthly under its legendary editor, Nick Feik.
It was Nick who, in the wake of Luke Batty’s murder at the hands of his father in 2014, commissioned me to write my landmark essay Home Truths on the phenomenon of domestic violence. That story became the foundation for what would become a decade-long focus on abuse, coercive control and systems reform — work that has since defined my career as a journalist, author, educator and advocate.

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Today, David and I live on Gadigal-Bidjigal land with our magical daughter, Stevie, and our Egyptian balady cat, Kitty Ponting.

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Global Cats: Cairo, Beirut, Dubai... Sydney

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In 2012, a few months after David and I moved to Cairo, we were adopted by a charismatic ‘balady' ginger kitten who ran straight up my leg, clung to my shoulder and refused to let go. A cat-loving neighbour fetched a box so we could take him home. Just as we were about to walk off,  we heard a plaintive meow. Another kitten, clearly the ginger’s sibling, was crouched on the arch of a tyre. So now there were two.