The daughter of an Arrernte man and a Gurdanji woman, Pat was raised in Alice Springs. As CEO of the National Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Organisation, she is at the forefront of community efforts to Close the Gap in health outcomes for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.  Pat has over 40 years’ experience in senior leadership positions in government, business and academia including being the only Aboriginal person, only woman and longest serving CEO of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders Commission.  Amongst her many appointments, she also spent 18 months as Monash Chair of Australian Studies, Georgetown University, Washington DC, and was inaugural CEO of NITV.  Pat is the Coalition of Peaks Convenor and Co-Chair of the Joint Council on Closing the Gap. Pat holds a Masters Degree in Public Administration from the University of Canberra where she was awarded the University prize for Development Studies.

Joan Uhr, PSM was the inaugural Executive Director of the Sir Roland Wilson Foundation. She played a key role in establishing the Sir Roland Wilson Foundation scholarship programs. The Joan Uhr Prize—awarded each year to the PhD scholar who made the greatest contribution to public policy—was named in recognition of her contribution to the Foundation.

Professor Bruce Chapman is an economist who has worked at The Australian National University since 1984, and is a former Foundation board member and the inaugural Sir Roland Wilson Foundation Chair of Economics. He has extensive experience in public policy across a number of roles. He worked on the design of the Higher Education Contribution Scheme (HECS), introduced in 1989. Bruce was as a senior economic advisor to Prime Minister Paul Keating, a higher education financing consultant to the World Bank and a number of international governments, and a consultant to the Bradley Review of Australian Higher Education and to the Australian Government’s Base Funding Review.