Ita (Clare) Buttrose

Journalist, publisher, and broadcaster, born in Sydney, New South Wales, SE Australia. She was educated in Sydney, and joined Australian Consolidated Press at age 15 as a copy girl, going on to become editor of the Australian Women's Weekly, Australia's leading women's magazine. In 1981 she moved to News Limited as editor-in-chief of the Sunday Telegraph, becoming the first woman in Australia to edit either a daily or a Sunday paper. In 1988 she became editor of that paper's opposition, The Sun Herald, and by 1989 had started her own magazine, called Ita. She is chairman of the National Advisory Committee on AIDS, and one of the best-known women in Australia.

Ita Clare Buttrose AO OBE (born 17 January 1942) is an Australian journalist and businesswoman. She is probably best-remembered as the celebrity founding editor of Cleo (magazine), a high-circulation magazine aimed at young single women that was ground-breakingly frank about sexuality (and, in its infancy, featured nude male centrefolds), and later as the editor of the more sedate Australian Women's Weekly.

Buttrose was born at Mittagong, New South Wales in 1942. She has also been a radio broadcaster, editor of the Sydney tabloids the Daily Telegraph and Sunday Telegraph in the early 1980s, served on the board of News Limited, among many other prominent roles.

Another prominent role was as chairperson of the National Advisory Committee on AIDS (NACAIDS) from 1984 until 1987. On one notable occasion, she appeared personally in a nationwide TV campaign to explain that donating blood at a blood bank did not pose a risk of catching AIDS (the fear of which caused a significant drop in donations).

Buttrose's slight lisp was instantly familiar in the 1970s and 1980s.

Amongst other roles, Buttrose currently works on the professional speakers' circuit.