Monash University Welcomes Chief People Officer

Monash University has announced the appointment of Anna Phillips as Chief People Officer, following an extensive search. She will commence in the role on 29 January 2024, and will report into Chief Operating Officer and Senior Vice-President, Peter Marshall AM.

Anna is a strong, values-based leader renowned for engaging multidisciplinary teams around an organisational vision. She is passionate about empowering people to identify and realise their strengths, navigate change, and work together as a team, and we are proud that she joins us at Monash to lead our efforts in ensuring that the University remains a leader in the Australian higher education sector as a safe, diverse and inclusive workplace for all staff.

Anna joins Monash from her current position as Chief People Officer at Australian Catholic University (ACU), where she was responsible for the development of the ACU People Plan. She led the transformation of ACU’s People and Capability function, earning endorsement for a new delivery model to deliver the People Plan and improve operational and delivery excellence across all areas of the university. She also led progressive dialogue during enterprise bargaining negotiations, resulting in ratification of ACU’s Staff Enterprise Agreement 2022-2025.

Previously, Anna was the Chief People and Culture Officer at Austin Health, where she led the development and delivery of the organisation’s inaugural People Strategy. This included the design of a leadership framework to facilitate the development of future leaders and deliver programs for executives as well as clinical and non-clinical leaders, and the development and launch of the organisation’s first Reconciliation Action Plan and Diversity and Inclusion Plan.

Over the course of a decorated career in human resources, Anna has held numerous prominent roles in leading high performing organisations across diverse industries, including the University of Melbourne, IBM, PricewaterhouseCoopers and ANZ. Her distinguished reputation for shaping workplace culture to optimise performance while ensuring staff wellbeing and satisfaction, as well as building organisational capability to adapt to future ways of working will be instrumental in ensuring that Monash University remains a safe and inclusive workplace for many years to come.

We congratulate Anna and welcome her to Monash, and thank Renée Kemp for her contributions to the University in recent months as Interim Chief Human Resources Officer.