Brett Gale has advised us he is leaving the position of Executive Director of the Chifley Research Centre in November to take up a senior executive role with Lifeline.
The Chifley Research Centre is much stronger for Brett’s leadership. During his tenure Brett helped increase the profile of the organisation and solidified our financial base.
He has nearly doubled the number of supporters of the Chifley Research Centre and throughout his tenure, the work of the centre has focussed on being a centre of debate and discussion for creating a Labor culture of ideas. He established the Chifley Business Supporters Forum and recruited a suite of corporate partners to support it. Brett also established research partnerships with major organisations to help support our policy work including a landmark report on “Closing the Gender Pay Gap”.
He has supported the ALP’s rebuild after our loss last year with the excellent Towards 2022 conference with more than 400 people attending (and 90 presenters) to discuss policy challenges for the future.
During this extraordinary year, Chifley was one of the first organisations to tap into the national appetite for online events and managed to engage more than 4000 people across our Chifley Conversations series (with more to come). The Ben Chifley booklet produced for the 75 year anniversary of Ben becoming Prime Minister has been downloaded more than 1,000 times.
Brett is keen to remind us that he will always be part of the Labor family and sees his new role as contributing to the same ideals in a different way. I am sure we can all agree that supporting Lifeline, a crucial service for Australians in emotional distress, is needed now more than ever and I am sure they will benefit from his deep commitment to improving the lives of all Australians.
Brett will stay with Chifley through November.
We are recruiting for a replacement Executive Director and more detail can be found here.
Please join me in wishing Brett well for his new role and thanking him for his contribution to the Chifley Research Centre.
Linda White
Chair, Chifley Research Centre