Hon Julia Gillard AC
27th Prime Minister of Australia

Julia Gillard was sworn in as the 27th Prime Minister of Australia on 24 June 2010 and served in that office until June 2013. Ms Gillard is the first woman to ever serve as Australia’s Prime Minister or Deputy Prime Minister.

As Prime Minister and in her previous role as Deputy Prime Minister, Ms Gillard delivered nation-changing policies including reforming Australian education at every level from early childhood to university education, creating an emissions trading scheme to combat climate change, improving health care, commencing the nation’s first ever national scheme to care for people with disabilities, addressing the gender pay gap for social and community sector workers and delivering an apology to all those who had suffered through the practice of forced adoptions.

In October 2012, Ms Gillard received worldwide attention for her speech in Parliament on the treatment of women in professional and public life.She currently serves as the inaugural Chair of the Global Institute for Women’s Leadership at Kings College in London and at the Australian National University in Canberra, which through research, practice and advocacy, is addressing women’s under-representation in leadership.

In 2021 Ms Gillard was appointed Chair of Wellcome, a global charitable foundation based in the UK, which supports science to solve urgent worldwide health challenges.

Ms Gillard was Chair of Beyond Blue from 2017-2023 and Chair of the Global Partnership of Education from 2014-2021.

Ms Gillard’s memoirs, My Story, were published by Random House in September 2014. Her second book, Women and Leadership: Real Lives, Real Lesson, co-authored by Dr Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, explores the challenges women face in leadership. Her third book, Not Now, Not Ever – 10 years on from the misogyny speech, was released in October 2022.