Dr Anne Tiernan is a leading Australian scholar in public policy, with over a decade of prior experience in public administration and consultancy. Her career spans higher education, federal and state government, consultancy and teaching. Anne is respected for her independent, research-informed analysis and commentary on national politics, public administration and public policy. Now Managing Director of mission-led consultancy firm Constellation Impact Advisory, Anne consults regularly to organisations committed to purpose and positive impact. Anne is also Head of Research & Professor of Political Leadership at the McKinnon Institute for Political Leadership, and has been appointed as member of the Commonwealth Grants Commission.
Anne’s research focuses on the work of governing. She has written extensively on the political–administrative interface, governmental transitions, policy capacity and executive advisory arrangements - particularly the support needs of ministers, the role of the public service, policy influence and public policy agenda-setting.
She has published extensively in Australia and internationally, including The Oxford Handbook of Australian Politics (co-edited with Professor Jenny Lewis, 2021), Lessons in Governing: A Profile of Prime Ministers’ Chiefs of Staff and The Gatekeepers: Lessons from Prime Ministers’ Chiefs of Staff (both with R.A.W. Rhodes, Melbourne University Publishing, 2014), Learning to be a Minister: Heroic Expectations, Practical Realities (with Patrick Weller, Melbourne University Press, 2010) and Power Without Responsibility: Ministerial Staffers in Australian Governments from Whitlam to Howard (UNSW Press, 2007). With colleague Jennifer Menzies, she published a second edition of Caretaker Conventions in Australasia: Minding the Shop for Government' (ANU Press, 2014). With Julianne Schultz, she co-edited Griffith Review’s best-selling ‘Fixing the System’ issue in 2016; her essay ‘Active Citizens, Constructive Answers’ featured in Griffith Review ‘Matters of Trust’ in February 2020.
Dr Tiernan is a National Fellow of the Institute of Public Administration Australia, and a Fellow of the Australia and New Zealand School of Government (ANZSOG) and has held a range of Board appointments. These include: the Museum of Australian Democracy at Old Parliament House (2017-2020), Chair of the Queensland Independent Remuneration Tribunal (2016-19), an Ordinary Commissioner for the Crime and Corruption Commission (2017-2020). From 2008 to 2012, she was a member of the Board of Commissioners of the Queensland Public Service Commission and served on the Board of St Rita’s College Ltd.
An Adjunct Professor with Griffith University, and previously a member of the University’s senior leadership team, Anne served as inaugural Dean (Engagement) of the Griffith Business School, where she led development of the Group’s internationally acknowledged Engagement Strategy and operating model.