Emma Dawson is Executive Director of public policy think tank Per Capita. Emma has published reports, articles and opinion pieces on a wide range of public policy issues, and is the co-author of Per Capita’s landmark report Measure for Measure: Gender Equality in Australia, and co-editor, with Professor Janet McCalman, of the collection of essays What happens next? Reconstructing Australia after COVID-19, published by Melbourne University Press in September 2020.
She is a regular contributor to The Age and SMH and Guardian Australia, is a frequent guest on various ABC radio programs nationally, and an occasional panelist on The Drum on ABC TV. She appears regularly as an expert witness before parliamentary inquiries and often speaks at public events and conferences in Australia and internationally.
She has worked as a researcher at Monash University and the University of Melbourne; in policy and public affairs for SBS and Telstra, and as a senior policy adviser in the Rudd and Gillard Governments. She joined the Board of Australia21 in 2021 and is a Fellow of the Women’s Leadership Institute of Australia.