Chief Executive Officer
Elizabeth Foley
Elizabeth is a creative, high energy and well respected leader. She has over 20 years experience operating in leading corporate roles for blue chip companies. Elizabeth’s extensive skill and ability to operate at senior levels is reflected in her rapid career progression through blue chip organisations such as AXA, MLC, ING, Prudential and Unilever. Elizabeth possesses extensive formal qualifications and experience in commerce, investment, communications, marketing and finance. Elizabeth is a University medalist with 2 degrees, a graduate of the AICD and a Fellow of FINSIA.
Elizabeth also brings to the table a wealth of knowledge and qualification with over 10 years board membership experience. As well as being an AICD graduate Elizabeth was recently selected for the AICD’s exclusive Mentee program. Amongst Elizabeth’s directorships, of note is her 6 years as a Director on AXA’s unit trust company board, National Mutual Funds Management, with $12B funds under management. Here in her role as a Director, Elizabeth had oversight of the company financials and the profit and loss of AXA’s extensive range of trusts. Of particular note, during her tenure, this board successfully dealt with complex issues regarding mortgage and property fund liquidity and capital guarantees during the Global Financial Crisis.
Through her career Elizabeth has shown great skill and capacity, combining highly developed general management, strategic, analytical, and marketing skills with pragmatic implementation. Most recently Elizabeth’s strong general management skills have been demonstrated in her management and sponsorship of large scale projects. These included, successfully, managing a $20M project over 2 years to update a company’s entire product range to comply with major legislation changes at the federal level. The successful management of these projects has highlighted Elizabeth’s excellent people skills and strong cross-functional leadership ability, in some cases managing over 300 staff.
Elizabeth’s passion in supporting the not for profit sector, in particular health and medical research has long been driven by personal and professional experience. Following the loss of her husband to leukemia some years ago, Elizabeth was driven to contribute in many ways to promote health and medical research. Elizabeth chaired the board of “Quest for Life Foundation”, an organisation providing services to people with life threatening illnesses and their families. Elizabeth has continued an active interest and passion for medical and health research to this day.
As Chief Executive Officer of Research Australia, the national peak advocate for health and medical research, Elizabeth brings strong leadership and business acumen to the role. Elizabeth is passionate about the role of medical research in improving treatment options and driving health improvement, and is committed to building on the sound reputation of Research Australia as a “whole of community” voice for health and medical research. Elizabeth’s strategic intent is to facilitate dynamic debate, shape research policy and galvanize public opinion allowing Research Australia to take on new challenges.