Professor Peter Shergold is the CEO and Macquarie Group Foundation Chair of the newly established Centre for Social Impact (CSI), a collaboration of the Business Schools of the University of New South Wales, the Melbourne University and the Swinburne University of Technology. It will deliver business management teaching and research on not-for-profit organisations and social enterprises and promote corporate responsibility and social investment.
Professor Shergold joined the Board of AMP Limited in May 2008. He serves on the Audit Committee and also on the Board of AMP Life. He is the chair of a venture capital start-up, QuintessenceLabs. He is also actively involved in the non-profit sector and is Chair of the Australian Rural Leadership Foundation; a Director of the National Indigenous Development Centre; and, from March 2009, the Chair of the Ethics Committee of the Fundraising Institute of Australia.
Professor Shergold has previously had both an academic and a public service career. He gained a BA Hons (1st Class) from Hull University in 1968; an MA from the University of Illinois in 1969 and a PhD from London School of Economics in 1976. In 1972 he took up a lectureship at the University of New South Wales and in 1985 he became Head of the Department of Economic History at the University. He has taught at the University of Illinois, Southampton University, London School of Economics and Pennsylvania State University and has twice been awarded a Fulbright Scholarship. He was elected a Fellow of The Academy of Social Sciences in Australia in 2005. He is also a Fellow of the Australia New Zealand School of Government, a Fellow of the Institute of Public Administration Australia and a Senior Visiting Fellow of the Singapore Civil Service College.
Dr Shergold was a CEO in the Australian Public Service for two decades. In 1987, he established the Office of Multicultural Affairs. From 1991, he headed the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission (ATSIC). At the end of his term in July 1994, he was appointed Chief Executive Officer of Comcare. He was Public Service Commissioner from September 1995 to February 1998. From then until January 2002, he served as Secretary of the Department of Employment, Workplace Relations and Small Business. Then he was appointed the Secretary of the Department of Education, Science and Training. For five years from February 2003, Dr Shergold was Australia’s most senior public administrator, serving as Secretary of the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet. In all, he served four Prime Ministers and eight Ministers in both Coalition and Labor governments.
He was made a Member in the Order of Australia (AM) for public service on Australia Day 1996. He was a recipient of the Centennial Medal in 2003. In 2007, he was elevated to Australia’s highest award, the Companion in the Order of Australia (AC). |