Jan Davis is a foundation member of the Maitland Greens, having helped to found the group in 1993. She has been an active political and community campaigner all her life, working for the Vietnam Moratorium movement and Women's Liberation in the 1960s and 1970s. In 2003, when she ran for the Greens for a seat in the Legislative Council of New South Wales, she was involved in the 'No Sydney Waste in the Hunter' campaign.

Jan has always been active on local community committees, notably ones involving women and children, such as the Maitland Women's Refuge Committee. She also worked on the Friends of the Lower Hunter campaign to prevent an aluminium smelter being built among the Hunter Valley vineyards.

Sources used to compile this entry: Putting Skirts on the Sacred Benches: Women Candidates for the New South Wales Parliament, Australian Women's Archives Project, 2006, http://www.womenaustralia.info/exhib/pssb/home.html.