Lisa Annese

Expertise: Workplace inclusion, inclusive leadership, inclusive language, work-life balance/flexible working, parental leave, gender equality/women in leadership, gender pay gap, cultural diversity/the ‘bamboo ceiling’/Asia capability, LGBTIQ+ inclusion, age diversity, mental health, discrimination, sexual harassment, disability and accessibility, family and domestic violence

Speaker Bio: Lisa Annese has been the Chief Executive Officer of Diversity Council Australia since 2014. Under Lisa's leadership, DCA delivers innovative diversity practice resources for Australian businesses and supports them in improving their inclusion capability. 

She has led ground-breaking, evidence-based research, including Australia’s first national index on workplace diversity and inclusion, seminal research on the economics of the gender pay-gap and original work on building Asian Leadership Capability, as well as research supporting individuals being “Out at Work” and main-streaming flexible work. In 2018, Lisa was named one of the AFR’s 100 Women of Influence.

In 2019 she was elected to the Board of Amnesty International Australia. Lisa is also Executive Producer of DCA’s podcast, The Art of Inclusion. Lisa has had a long career in the diversity and inclusion space across the corporate, government and not-for-profit sector.

Some of her career highlights include advocating for policy action in areas including government-funded paid parental leave and closing the gender pay gap; presenting DCA’s leading research internationally; developing the first ever census of ‘Australian Women in Leadership’ while at the Workplace Gender Equality Agency, and co-authoring “Chief Executives Unplugged: CEO’s Get Real About Women in the Workplace”.