Our specialist team of experts contributing unique perspectives on social policy matters.
professor helen Dickinson
Helen is Professor of Public Service Research and Director of the Public Service Research Group at the School of Business, University of New South Wales, Canberra. Her expertise is in public services, particularly in relation to topics such as governance, leadership, commissioning and priority setting and decision-making. Helen has published eighteen books and over sixty peer-reviewed journal articles on these topics and is also a frequent commentator within the mainstream media. She is co-editor of the Journal of Health, Organization and Management and Australian Journal of Public Administration. She is also a board member of the Consumer Policy Research Centre. In 2015 Helen was made a Victorian Fellow of the Institute of Public Administration Australia and she has worked with a range of different levels of government, community organisations and private organisations in Australia, UK, New Zealand and Europe on research and consultancy programmes. Building on her experience in previous senior roles in the Melbourne School of Government and the Public Service Academy, University of Birmingham, Helen continues to make research evidence useful and accessible to policy and practice.
PROFESSOR GEMMA CAREY
Gemma co-founded Power to Persuade in 2011. She passed away in November 2024 after a long illness.
Gemma was the Director of the Centre for Social Impact UNSW, where she lead a multi-disciplinary team of researchers and educators committed to addressing inequality. She worked with governments and non-government organisations to identify and change structures and processes that impact inequality. Her research in recent years was primarily focused on the implementation of the National Disability Insurance Scheme.
Gemma published extensively on different aspects of policy and health. She had a PhD in social policy and population health, and a Masters of Arts (Anthropology and Public Health), and a Bachelor (1st Class hons) in Health Sciences.
ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR Sue Olney
Sue is the Director of Power to Persuade. She is the UoM-BSL Principal Research Fellow in the School of Social and Political Sciences at the University of Melbourne, an Honorary Associate Professor in the Crawford School of Public Policy at ANU, and a Visiting Fellow in the Public Service Research Group in the School of Business at UNSW Canberra. Her research examines policy design and implementation, and impacts of reform of public services on individuals and communities, with a focus on disability services, employment, and welfare-to-work service systems. Over her career in universities, government and in the not-for-profit sector, she has been part of numerous research teams, government inquiries, cross-government and cross-sector initiatives, committees and working groups examining governance, policy implementation and equity issues in employment, training and disability services in Australia and internationally, and has worked on both sides of government contracts. Her past appointments at the University of Melbourne include Public Policy Research Fellow at the Melbourne Disability Institute, Honorary Senior Fellow in the Melbourne School of Government, and Honorary Fellow in the Melbourne Social Equity Institute, and her academic experience includes teaching and research on governance and public administration at the University of Melbourne, UNSW Canberra, ANU, and the Australia and New Zealand School of Government (ANZSOG). Sue holds a PhD in Public Policy and is on the editorial board of the Australian Journal of Public Administration.
Dr LEONORA RISSE
Leonora is an economist who specialises in gender equality. She is a Research Fellow with the Women’s Leadership Institute Australia and the Women and Public Policy Program at Harvard University. She is a co-founder of the Women in Economics Network (WEN) in Australia and currently serves as the WEN National Chair. Leonora earned her PhD in Economics from the University of Queensland, and previously served as a Senior Research Economist for the Australian Government Productivity Commission. She is currently appointed as a Senior Lecturer in Economics at RMIT University and has contributed academic publications on a range of workforce, demographic, equality and disadvantage issues. Leonora engages regularly with government, industry, community groups and public audience on gender equality issues. She focuses on identifying evidence-based strategies to close gender gaps in economic outcomes and applying a ‘gender lens’ to economic analysis and policy design.
Dr Susan Maury
Susan is Lead, Research and Impact in the Victorian Health Promotion Foundation (VicHealth), and a past co-director of Power to Persuade. Prior to joining VicHealth, she was the Senior Research and Evaluation Officer at Good Shepherd Australia New Zealand, specialising in the gendered nature of poverty in Australia, the welfare system, and precarious employment. She oversees the Women’s Policy Action Tank, and also regularly contributes analyses on the differential gendered impacts of government policy and how psychology can illuminate policy shortfalls. Prior to moving to Australia, Susan spent 20 years in the international development sector. She holds a Bachelor of Arts in English/writing concentration, a Master of Science in organisational behaviour, and a PhD in psychology from Monash University. Susan is on Twitter @SusanMaury
Dr SOPHIE YATES
Sophie is a Research Fellow at the Crawford School of Public Policy, ANU and was previously Research Fellow at the Public Service Research Group, School of Business, UNSW Canberra and the Australia and New Zealand School of Government (ANZSOG). Her research focuses on value creation in public services, particularly for those from marginalised groups. She has published on issues such as gender and family violence, disability policy, and services for people leaving prison. She is Associate Editor of the Australian Journal of Social Issues and editorial board member of Public Management Review. She has published in top international journals and won several awards for her research. Sophie tweets @DrSophieYates.
Dr Simone Casey
Simone is a Senior Project Officer at Economic Justice Australia. She has a background in social policy research and advocacy relating to labour market programs, unemployment, welfare conditionality, automation in social security, and structural discrimination perpetuating the social and economic inequality of women and people with disabilities. Simone has previously held a variety of roles in policy advocacy, research and communications in the employment services and welfare sectors. She holds a PhD in employment services, and is a Research Associate at RMIT.
Simone has contributed to many academic and normative research projects involving quantitative and qualitative research methods, where the publication outputs have been both scholarly and/or policy focused.
professor paul smyth
Paul is Professor of Social Policy at the University of Melbourne and from 2004-2013 was also General Manager of the Research & Policy Centre at the Brotherhood of St Laurence (BSL), Fitzroy, Australia. Paul’s diverse career combines academic and social action experience. He was previously the Director of Social Policy in the School of Social Work and Social Policy at the University of Queensland. Prior to this he was senior researcher at Uniya, the Jesuit social research and action centre at Kings Cross, Sydney. A former Catholic priest, he also worked for 20 years in youth and family care.
Paul’s research areas include contemporary Australian social policy, local governance and social inclusion, and international perspectives on social and economic inclusion. He is currently on the councils of the Australian Institute of Family Studies and the Australian Catholic Social Justice Commission. He is an External Thought Leader for The Wyatt Benevolent Institution Inc.
PROFESSOR kay cook
Kay is a Professor in the Department of Social Sciences at Swinburne University. Her work explores how new and developing social policies such as welfare-to-work, child support and child care policies, transform relationships between individuals, families and the state. Her work seeks to make the personal impact of these policies explicit in order to provide tangible evidence to policy makers to affect more humanistic reform. Her research has contributed to the development of the Australian Bureau of Statistics 2010 General Social Survey, the Australian Law Reform Commission inquiry into Family Violence and Commonwealth Law, and the Parliamentary Inquiry into the Child Support Program. She was the Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Family Studies from 2012 - 2018 and is a current Co-Director of the International Network of Child Support Scholars.
professor robyn keast
Robyn has a long standing involvement in social policy, both as a practitioner and academic. Although holding a diverse research and publishing portfolio, she is best known for her work on networked arrangements and collaborative practice, with more than 100 publications on this topic as well asa growing collection of artefacts such as Fact Sheets, collaboration decision support tools and blogs.
For the past decade or so her work has focused on the development and management of research collaborations, including the Collaborative Research Network: Policy and Planning for Regional Sustainability, the Airport Metropolis Project and the Australian Asset Management Collaborative as well as joint government/academic projects. Together these experiences have highlighted the importance and challenges of transdisciplinary collaborative practice.
Currently semi-retired, Robyn is using her newly freed-up time and energy to re-visit some of the pesky problems that evaded her earlier efforts as well as pursue new areas of interest, including transdisciplinary research models and implementation, research impact, network ecologies and designing shoes.
ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR BEN SPIES-BUTCHER
Ben teaches Economy and Society and is Discipline Chair of Sociology in the Macquarie School of Social Sciences. He is co-director of the Australian Basic Income Lab, a collaboration between the Macquarie School of Social Sciences, the School of Social and Political Science at Sydney University and the Crawford School at ANU. Ben’s research focuses on the political economy of social policy and the welfare state, particularly how economic and political change shape social policy financing. His current research explores how financial logics common in the private sector are reshaping social policy through changes in public sector budgeting, and the potential for these changes to open new opportunities for egalitarian social provision. You can follow Ben on twitter via @SensibleBSB.
dr lesley russell
Lesley is an Adjunct Associate Professor at the Menzies Centre for Health Policy (MCHP) at the University of Sydney. Her research interests include health care reform in Australia and the US, mental health, Indigenous health, addressing health disparities and health budget issues. Lesley has substantial experience working in health policy in the United States and Australia, both in and out of government. In 2009-12 she worked in Washington DC on a range of issues around the enactment and implementation of President Obama’s health care reforms, initially as a Visiting Fellow at the Center for American Progress and later as a Senior Advisor to the U.S. Surgeon General in the Department of Health and Human Services.
professor jon altman
Jon is a research professor at the Alfred Deakin Institute for Citizenship and Globalisation, Deakin University, Melbourne and an emeritus professor of the Australian National University (ANU) currently with the School of Regulation and Global Governance (RegNet) in the College of Asia and the Pacific. He is also an adjunct professorial fellow at the Research Institute for Environment and Livelihoods, Charles Darwin University, Darwin. Trained in economics and anthropology, from 1990–2010 he was the foundation director of the Centre for Aboriginal Economic Policy Research at ANU. In 1979 and 1980 he lived with Kuninjku-speaking people at Mumeka outstation in western Arnhem Land while undertaking doctoral research; he continues his friendships and collaborations with this group who he has re-visited on over 50 occasions since. Altman’s political advocacy covers a wide range of social justice and human rights issues including the economic right of Indigenous peoples to live on their lands and the need for forms of alternate development that match Indigenous aspirations as well as diversity of circumstances and possibilities.
professor greg marston
Greg is Professor of Social Policy in the School of Public Health and Social Work, Queensland University of Technology. His research interests include income support, debt and poverty, unemployment and the politics of policy change. His recent books include McDonald, C. And Marston, G. Bryson, L. (2013) The Australian Welfare State: Who Benefits Now? Palgrave Macmillan, Melbourne and Brodkin, E. and Marston, G. (eds) (2013) Work and the Welfare State: From Public Policy to Street-Level Practice, Georgetown University Press, Washington DC.