PhD title: The impact of government support schemes on prevalence of disability in Australia
Maathu is a Senior Actuary at the National Disability Insurance Agency, with experience in the disability, health and general insurance sectors. She led the Actuarial Strategic Initiatives team evaluating key scheme initiatives and priorities. Her work ranged over various strategic policy and service delivery areas including the early childhood strategy, framework for consistent decision making, review of pricing arrangements, intergovernmental agreements and workforce modelling.
Through her PhD research, Maathu will investigate the drivers of increasing prevalence of Autism, focusing on the impact of government support schemes. Her research will also investigate the types of supports that are effective in achieving outcomes using a novel data driven approach. This research will inform policy by assessing the effectiveness of scheme design and service delivery of disability supports.
Maathu is a Fellow of the Actuaries Institute, Chartered Enterprise Risk Actuary and Board member of the Actuaries Institute Australia. She won the Actuaries Institute’s Melville Prize and the International Actuarial Association’s Bob Alting von Geusau Prize for research conducted in her Honours degree in Actuarial Studies from the University of New South Wales.
Nirmalendran, M, Sherris, M, & Hanewald, K. 2014, ‘Pricing and solvency of value-maximizing life annuity providers’. Astin Bulletin: The Journal of the IAA, Vol. 44, No. 1, pp. 39-61.
Sir Roland Wilson Scholarship
2025
Sharon
Rosenrauch
Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water
The Australian National University
PhD title: Cracking the ceiling: exploring behavioural interventions to address barriers to promotion amongst existing employees identifying with having a disability in the Australian Public Service (APS)
Sharon is Principal Behavioural Scientist and Director of the Behavioural Science Unit at the Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water.
For nearly a decade, Sharon has played a leadership role in promoting the use of behavioural science to put people at the centre of public policy.
Despite a range of inclusion initiatives, APS employees who identify as living with disability have lower rates of promotion at all levels, even when controlling for experience and education. Research is needed to better understand barriers to promotion and the under-representation of this cohort in leadership positions. Sharon’s research will employ a unique behavioural science and mixed methods approach to examine barriers and enablers, and develop an evidence-based behavioural intervention that can be applied across the APS to help crack the promotion ceiling and improve career equity for workers living with disability.
The Sir Roland Wilson Foundation is a partnership between The Australian National University, Charles Darwin University and the Australian Public Service.
