45 Essential Thought Leaders in Healthcare Leadership in Australia and New Zealand

Introduction

Healthcare leadership in Australia and New Zealand is being tested at a pace and scale that few other leadership contexts match. The system serving Australians runs on a budget exceeding $250 billion annually, employs more than 1.5 million people, and is navigating simultaneous pressure from workforce shortages, digital transformation, Indigenous health equity obligations, and a population that is ageing faster than the infrastructure built to care for it. A 2025 study published in the Journal of Healthcare Leadership examining 276 Australian healthcare managers and executives found that most leaders deeply valued ethics, continuous improvement, staff wellbeing, and accountability, yet consistently lacked the protected time, tailored development, and consistent measurement of leadership effectiveness they needed to act on those values.

Across the Tasman, Health New Zealand entered 2025 under commission governance after fiscal pressures required urgent structural intervention. The appointment of Dr Dale Bramley as CEO from July 2025 and the reconstitution of the Health New Zealand Board under Professor Lester Levy CNZM as Chair signal a sector at a genuine inflection point, where the question of leadership capability is not abstract but existential. Research from the Committee for Economic Development of Australia's analysis of the IMD 2025 rankings found that Australia slipped to 60th on employee training, reflecting an underinvestment in the skills that help people and organisations adapt at pace. For health services navigating artificial intelligence, new models of care, and cost pressure, that underinvestment is not a theoretical risk; it is a performance constraint with direct consequences for patients.

This directory was compiled to surface the voices genuinely shaping how healthcare leadership is practised and understood across Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand. The people here were selected on three criteria. First, they have made a verifiable, substantive contribution to their area of healthcare leadership through research, published work, recognised service, or institutional leadership. Second, they are actively engaged in the conversation, whether through LinkedIn, conference platforms, public commentary, or published research in 2025 or 2026. Third, the list was deliberately built to move past the most prominent household names and surface voices the reader may not yet have encountered.

If your team is navigating the cultural and interpersonal dimensions of healthcare leadership, including difficult conversations, decision-making under pressure, and team dynamics, Jonno White works with healthcare leadership teams across Australia, New Zealand, and internationally as a Certified Working Genius Facilitator and keynote speaker. Email jonno@consultclarity.org.

Why Healthcare Leadership Matters: The Stakes

Healthcare is one of the few sectors where leadership failures have directly measurable consequences for human life. Research on sustainable leadership in Australian healthcare published in 2025 confirmed what frontline leaders already know: investing in leadership development is directly linked to better recruitment and retention, stronger organisational culture, improved clinical safety, and greater operational efficiency. These are not soft outcomes. They are the structural conditions that determine whether a health system functions.

Women make up 75 per cent of the Australian healthcare workforce, yet a study published through the Advancing Women in Healthcare Leadership initiative found that only 12.5 per cent of large hospital CEOs are women. The research base demonstrating that transformational and collaborative leadership styles, more commonly associated with women, produce better healthcare outcomes continues to grow, which makes this disparity both a justice issue and a practical system performance issue.

The voices in this directory represent a cross-section of the disciplines most actively shaping how Australian and New Zealand healthcare leaders lead. They span health system reform, clinical governance, digital transformation, Indigenous health equity, nursing, allied health, mental health, public health research, and implementation science. Together, they represent the intellectual and operational infrastructure of a sector that employs more people, touches more lives, and navigates more complexity than almost any other. If you lead in healthcare in Australia or New Zealand and want to understand which voices are driving the most important conversations, this list is your starting point.

To explore how Jonno White's leadership facilitation programs can support your healthcare team's culture and performance, email jonno@consultclarity.org.

How This List Was Compiled

Every person on this list was selected on three criteria. First, a documented and verifiable contribution to healthcare leadership in Australia or Aotearoa New Zealand through research, published work, institutional leadership, or recognised professional service. Second, active engagement with the healthcare leadership conversation in 2025 or 2026. Third, a deliberate effort to move past the most prominent household names to surface voices the reader may not yet have encountered.

The list spans every Australian state, both islands of New Zealand, and twelve distinct disciplines within healthcare. It represents clinicians, executives, researchers, advocates, policymakers, digital health innovators, and Indigenous health leaders. It does not claim to be exhaustive. Healthcare leadership in this part of the world has more excellent practitioners than any single list can hold.

Category A: System Leadership and Peak Body Advocacy

These leaders shape the system-level infrastructure, governance, and policy frameworks within which Australian and New Zealand healthcare operates. Their decisions affect not one organisation but the entire ecosystem.

1. Professor Christine Kilpatrick AO

Professor Christine Kilpatrick AO holds one of the most structurally significant positions in Australian healthcare quality and safety as Board Chair of the Australian Commission on Safety and Quality in Health Care, a role she assumed in April 2024. She simultaneously serves as Chair of the Royal Children's Hospital Board in Melbourne from July 2025, reflecting a career defined by leading the country's most prominent health institutions. Her executive credentials include two decades as a hospital CEO, including nine years leading the Royal Children's Hospital and six years as CEO of the Royal Melbourne Hospital, before transitioning to governance leadership.

Her publicly stated view, delivered at the launch of the ACSQHC's 2025-30 Strategic Plan in July 2025, was that the plan represents a timely recalibration of the Commission's priorities within the rapidly evolving healthcare environment, with a focus on clinical governance, reducing low-value care, and improving healthcare sustainability. This framing reflects a governance philosophy that takes the structural conditions for quality seriously rather than treating safety and quality as compliance exercises.

2. Conjoint Professor Anne Duggan

Conjoint Professor Anne Duggan brings the perspective of a practising gastroenterologist with thirty years of health sector experience to her role as CEO of the Australian Commission on Safety and Quality in Health Care, a position she has held since March 2023. Her career trajectory, from clinical director to chief medical officer to CEO, reflects a model of clinical leadership that moves into system-level influence without losing the clinical anchoring that gives that influence its authority.

Under her leadership, the ACSQHC launched a new 2025-30 Strategic Plan in July 2025 that identified high-quality care in an evolving environment, strong outcome-focused clinical governance, empowered patients and communities, and an improvement-driven workforce culture as its four core priorities. Professor Duggan has stated publicly that the Commission's goal is to lead system development and maturity in clinical governance, workforce culture, and patient, carer and community empowerment, a framing that positions patient agency as a central rather than peripheral concern.

3. Susan Pearce AM

Susan Pearce AM manages the largest state health system in Australia as Secretary of NSW Health, overseeing a workforce of more than 142,000 full-time equivalents and a budget exceeding $30 billion. Appointed to the role in March 2022, she brings deep institutional knowledge of the NSW system from her previous role as Deputy Secretary for Patient Experience and System Performance. Her work sits at the intersection of health system strategy, service delivery oversight, and performance management at a scale that makes NSW Health one of the largest enterprises of any kind in the Southern Hemisphere.

She was a headline speaker at the NSW Cancer Summit in 2025, reflecting her visibility as a system-level voice on the intersection of clinical priority-setting and health system organisation. Her leadership framing centres on world-class, patient-centred care delivered consistently across the state's geographic, demographic, and socioeconomic diversity.

4. Amanda Cattermole PSM

Amanda Cattermole PSM has led the Australian Digital Health Agency since September 2020, and by March 2026 she was publicly articulating a shift in how digital health fits within health system reform. Speaking at Australian Healthcare Week in 2026, she stated that digital health has gone from being a supporting function to being central to how the system transforms. This is not aspirational language from an agency leader; it reflects the actual architecture of health system reform in Australia, where the My Health Record, the National Digital Health Strategy, and the Single Digital Patient Record program in NSW represent infrastructure that is now foundational to how care is coordinated.

The ADHA's establishment of a National Clinical Governance Committee for Digital Health in March 2026, which Cattermole confirmed was designed to ensure the future of digital health is clinically safe, effective and centred on the needs of all Australians, represents a significant step toward embedding clinical governance into digital transformation programs rather than treating them as separate streams.

5. Professor Michael Kidd AO

Professor Michael Kidd AO became Australia's Chief Medical Officer on 1 June 2025, the first general practitioner to hold this role. His appointment followed a career that included presidencies of both the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners and the World Organization of Family Doctors, and a period as the country's Deputy Chief Medical Officer during the COVID-19 pandemic, where he was the public face of Australia's primary care response. He simultaneously holds academic appointments at both the University of New South Wales and the University of Oxford.

His research focus on global primary care, published in The Lancet in 2025 with co-author Laura Allen and examining what global primary care is and why it matters, reflects a leadership philosophy that connects local clinical practice to international health system design. As CMO, his platform on primary care reform, multidisciplinary team-based care, and reducing health inequity through primary care investment gives him one of the most influential policy voices in the country.

6. Professor Dorothy Keefe PSM

Professor Dorothy Keefe PSM has led Cancer Australia, Australia's national cancer agency, since 2019. The dual achievement of overseeing both the development of Australia's first national lung cancer screening program and the creation and early implementation of the first Australian Cancer Plan, a ten-year national framework for cancer prevention, treatment, care, and survivorship, represents a scope of strategic policy leadership that has shaped oncology practice across the country. OncoDaily recognised her in January 2026 as one of the 100 Most Influential CEOs in Oncology globally.

Her international work includes chairing the Governing Council of the International Agency for Research on Cancer as Australia's representative, a platform that extends her influence on cancer policy into the global arena. Her academic credentials, including a Master of Aboriginal Studies from the University of South Australia completed 2021-2023, reflect a commitment to embedding Indigenous health equity into her professional practice at a personal as well as institutional level.

7. Rachel Green

Rachel Green leads SANE Australia, the national organisation supporting Australians with complex mental health needs, and was recognised as the 2025 recipient of the EMHIC Leadership Excellence Award for Australia for her work reshaping how digital mental health support is designed and delivered. Under her leadership, SANE developed Australia's first digital psychosocial recovery and support platform, co-designed with people with lived experience of mental illness, now used by approximately 200,000 Australians annually.

Her background spans the design of major national mental health initiatives, including co-founding the National Mental Health Commission and authoring the Contributing Life Framework. Her contribution to Australian healthcare leadership lies in demonstrating what it looks like to build systems from lived experience upward rather than from clinical and policy assumptions downward, a methodology that is increasingly being recognised as essential to designing healthcare that actually works for the people it is meant to serve.

8. Bronwyn Morris-Donovan

Bronwyn Morris-Donovan leads Allied Health Professions Australia as CEO, the national peak body representing 30 allied health professions and the primary advocacy voice for a workforce that handles Australia's most prevalent chronic conditions. Her advocacy that allied health is no longer fighting for a seat at the table in health system reform reflects a change in how this workforce is being positioned within national primary healthcare strategy, including a draft national allied health workforce strategy that was under development as of 2025.

Her focus on the structural inequality between allied health and medicine in areas like Medicare rebates, aged care funding, and workforce policy has made her a consistent commentator in the health reform conversation. She appeared as a speaker at the Digital Health Festival 2026, reflecting a cross-disciplinary platform that extends beyond traditional allied health advocacy into digital transformation and integrated care models.

9. Richard Taggart

Richard Taggart became the permanent CEO of eHealth NSW and Chief Information Officer for NSW Health in January 2025, taking on leadership of one of the most significant digital health transformation programs in Australian history. The NSW Single Digital Patient Record program, which Taggart has described as part of a digitally enabled health system that meets the needs of staff and the people of NSW, is the largest digital transformation in Australian public health history. His clinical background in pharmacy, combined with executive roles as CIO at Sydney Local Health District and National Director of Digital Health at Calvary Health Care, gives him a perspective on digital health that integrates clinical workflow with infrastructure.

His arrival at eHealth NSW coincided with a period in which digital health is moving from supporting function to central platform for health system reform, making the CIO role in NSW Health more strategically significant than at any previous point in the system's history.

10. Adjunct Professor Alison McMillan PSM

Adjunct Professor Alison McMillan PSM has served as Australia's Chief Nursing and Midwifery Officer since November 2019, making her the most senior nursing and midwifery voice in the national policy conversation. With more than forty years of experience as a registered nurse, her strategic policy advice to Ministers and departmental executives on nursing workforce regulation, health system reform, and education shapes how Australia's largest clinical workforce is deployed and developed.

Her current leadership of the development of Australia's first National Nursing Workforce Strategy, covering the 420,000 registered nurses who constitute more than 40 per cent of Australia's total health workforce, represents one of the most consequential workforce policy projects in the sector. She was awarded a Public Service Medal in June 2021 for her leadership of Australia's COVID-19 primary care response.

Category B: Medical Administration, Clinical and Academic Leadership

These leaders have built careers at the intersection of clinical expertise, organisational management, and institutional reform. Their contributions define the discipline of medical administration and clinical leadership in Australasia.

11. Professor Erwin Loh

Professor Erwin Loh serves as President of the Royal Australasian College of Medical Administrators and holds senior medical leadership roles across Australia's most prominent health systems. His career has included national Chief Medical Officer roles at St Vincent's Health Australia and Monash Health, and he holds a PhD in management along with qualifications in medicine and law. He is Professor at Monash University leading the Clinical Leadership and Management Unit, and serves on multiple boards in Australian healthcare governance.

His 2024 paper co-authored with Jeffrey Braithwaite and colleagues in BMC Medical Education, examining healthcare leaders navigating complexity and the competencies required for the future, reflects his ongoing commitment to synthesising evidence about what leadership in complex health systems actually requires. The paper is one of the more practically grounded contributions to the field from an Australian perspective, offering a systems-thinking framework for how health organisations develop the leaders they need.

12. Professor Jeffrey Braithwaite

Professor Jeffrey Braithwaite is Founding Director of the Australian Institute of Health Innovation and Director of the Centre for Healthcare Resilience and Implementation Science at Macquarie University, and is the most prolific and internationally recognised Australian researcher in health systems science. By 2025, his career research funding had reached $236 million across 144 grants. His work on resilient healthcare, accreditation, clinical governance, and the culture of acute care settings has shaped how health system leaders in Australia and internationally understand the relationship between organisational structure and patient safety outcomes.

He is a Faculty Member of the Safety, Quality, Informatics, Leadership International Certificate Program at Harvard University Medical School and an Immediate Past President of the International Society for Quality in Health Care, reflecting a platform that extends his influence well beyond Australia. His 2023 article in The BMJ on the power of autonomy and resilience in healthcare delivery, co-authored with colleagues from the UK, Denmark, and Norway, captures his interest in comparative health systems analysis as a tool for improving Australian practice.

13. Professor Tracey O'Brien AM

Professor Tracey O'Brien AM serves as NSW Chief Cancer Officer and CEO of the Cancer Institute NSW, a role that positions her as the state's most senior strategic voice on cancer control. She was recognised in March 2026 as NSW Premier's Woman of Excellence, the state's highest honour for women, for a career spanning more than 25 years in frontline cancer care, research, and system reform. OncoDaily recognised her in 2025 as one of the top global CEOs in oncology.

Her dual identity as a paediatric haematologist-oncologist who led breakthroughs in precision medicine at the Sydney Children's Hospitals Network, and as a system-level leader connecting clinical research to population-level cancer outcomes, makes her contribution distinctive. Her public statement on receiving the NSW award that healthcare is always a team effort reflects a leadership philosophy that positions institutional recognition as a vehicle for amplifying collective rather than individual impact.

14. Professor Jeff Dunn AO

Professor Jeff Dunn AO leads two of Australia's most significant cancer survivorship research platforms as both Chair of Cancer Survivorship at the University of Southern Queensland and Chief of Mission and Head of Research at the Prostate Cancer Foundation of Australia. He was named a Queensland Great in June 2025 by Premier David Crisafulli, an award recognising transformational contribution to Queensland, for more than four decades of work establishing Queensland's first dedicated cancer helpline, developing world-leading community-based cancer support programs, and securing access to cancer registry data for Queensland researchers.

His research published in multiple peer-reviewed journals in 2025, including on the trajectories of supportive care needs for people who travel for cancer treatment, reflects a career combining rigorous empirical research with direct service design. He holds professorial appointments at both the University of Southern Queensland and Griffith University, giving him a cross-institutional platform in the Australian cancer research landscape.

15. Emeritus Professor Sandra Leggat

Emeritus Professor Sandra Leggat is Australia's most cited researcher in health services management, with more than 7,400 citations in Google Scholar, and her work on management competence, organisational culture in healthcare, and the development of frontline health managers has shaped the discipline of health services management in Australia since she joined La Trobe University in 2002. Her second edition textbook, co-authored through Cambridge University Press, covers leadership and management in health services and includes updated chapters on empathic leadership and leading in the digital age.

Her research establishing that management competence links directly to organisational success and the delivery of safe, efficient healthcare service provides an evidence base for the kind of systematic investment in management development that the sector research consistently shows is lacking. She is Emeritus Professor at La Trobe University, and her published body of work remains the most comprehensive Australian treatment of what it means to manage health services well.

16. Professor Suzanne Chambers AO

Professor Suzanne Chambers AO serves as Executive Dean of the Faculty of Health Sciences at Australian Catholic University, overseeing one of Australia's largest nursing education programs alongside schools of paramedicine, public health, speech pathology, and exercise science. She was appointed an Officer of the Order of Australia in 2018 for distinguished service to medical research in psycho-oncology and to community health. Her career includes prior directorships of the Menzies Health Institute Queensland at Griffith University and the Dean of Health role at the University of Technology Sydney.

Her research on psychological interventions for cancer patients, distress screening, and the design of support programs specifically for men with prostate cancer on androgen deprivation therapy represents a body of work with direct clinical applications, published in journals including Psycho-Oncology in 2025 as part of the PCFA's national survivorship program. ACU was ranked number one globally for research quality in psychology in the 2026 Times Higher Education subject rankings, providing institutional context for the strength of her faculty's research profile.

17. Professor Enrico Coiera

Professor Enrico Coiera is Foundation Professor in Medical Informatics at Macquarie University and Director of the Centre for Health Informatics within the Australian Institute of Health Innovation. He founded and leads the Australian Alliance for Artificial Intelligence in Healthcare, making him Australia's most prominent academic voice on the governance and safe deployment of AI in clinical settings. He was named the Australian Field Leader in Medical Informatics in 2021 and has more than 400 publications and 25,000 citations in Google Scholar, reflecting an international reputation that extends well beyond the Australian context.

His December 2025 preprint, co-authored with colleagues at St Vincent's Hospital Emergency Department, presenting an actionable framework for AI governance in healthcare organisations, addresses one of the most pressing operational challenges facing healthcare leaders in 2026. The framework responds directly to the surge in shadow AI adoption identified across healthcare organisations, providing practical governance architecture that organisations can implement without waiting for regulation to catch up.

18. Professor Johanna Westbrook

Professor Johanna Westbrook leads the Centre for Health Systems and Safety Research at Macquarie University's Australian Institute of Health Innovation, one of Australia's leading research groups in health informatics and patient safety. Her research on the impact of electronic medical records, clinical communication, and information systems on patient safety has generated some of the most cited empirical evidence in Australian health systems research. She has been a frequent collaborator with Jeffrey Braithwaite in multiple large-scale studies on health system performance, and her work has directly informed policy on electronic medication management and clinical handover.

Her contribution to healthcare leadership lies in providing the evidence base that allows clinical and operational leaders to make informed decisions about digital health implementation. Without rigorous research on what digital systems actually do to patient safety, clinical workflows, and organisational performance, healthcare leaders are navigating digital transformation without a map. Professor Westbrook and her team provide that map.

Category C: Digital Health and Innovation

Australia and New Zealand are internationally recognised for the depth of their digital health ecosystem. These leaders are driving the transformation of how care is delivered, coordinated, and made safe through digital systems.

19. Adjunct Professor Anita Ghose

Adjunct Professor Anita Ghose is Founder and CEO of inventiveX, a boutique consultancy of healthcare and human services transformation specialists, and was announced as the leader and facilitator of the 2026 Women in Digital Health Leadership program for the Australasian Institute of Digital Health. A clinician by background and former partner at a Big Four professional services firm leading national health and aged care consulting, she brings a combination of clinical credibility, executive experience, and digital transformation expertise that spans government, industry, and not-for-profit sectors in Australia and internationally.

Her appointment to the WAITTA Board as a Board Director in August 2025 and her chairing of the Australian Information Industry Association's Health Policy Advisory Network in WA reflects a cross-sector platform that positions her as a connector between the technology industry, health policy, and clinical delivery. The AIDH's choice of her to lead the 2026 WiDHL program signals recognition of her as the current generation's most visible voice on women's leadership in the digital health ecosystem.

20. Associate Professor Naomi Dobroff

Associate Professor Naomi Dobroff serves as Chief Nursing and Midwifery Information Officer at Monash Health and chairs the Chief Nursing Informatics Officers Faculty for the Australian College of Nursing. She is a Fellow of both the Australian College of Nursing and the Australasian Institute of Digital Health, and is nationally and internationally recognised as a nursing informatics leader who has built the discipline of nursing informatics in the Australian context. She was a speaker at the HIC 2025 conference of the AIDH.

Her contribution sits at the intersection of nursing leadership and digital health transformation: she is specifically building the capability of the nursing workforce to lead and shape digital health systems, rather than simply adapt to them. This is a critically important contribution in a context where nurses are the most numerous users of electronic health records and clinical information systems, yet are frequently underrepresented in the governance and design of those systems.

21. Professor Nilmini Wickramasinghe

Professor Nilmini Wickramasinghe holds the Optus Chair of Digital Health at La Trobe University within the School of Computing, Engineering and Mathematical Sciences, and has been actively researching and teaching in health informatics for more than 25 years. She appeared as a speaker at the Digital Health Festival 2026, one of Australia's largest digital health events. Her research spans health informatics, digital health strategy, and the use of technology to improve healthcare delivery and patient outcomes, with a body of work that bridges clinical and technical disciplines.

Her professorial chair, funded through a major corporate partnership with Optus, reflects the growing recognition that digital health requires academic infrastructure as well as industry investment, and positions La Trobe as a significant node in Australia's digital health research ecosystem. Her long-term commitment to the field means she is one of the few Australian academics with a research perspective on digital health that spans multiple technology generations.

Category D: Health Systems Research and Implementation Science

Research drives the evidence base for healthcare leadership. These researchers translate complex health system findings into actionable insights for practitioners and policymakers.

22. Professor Helena Teede AM

Professor Helena Teede AM is Director of the Monash Centre for Health Research and Implementation at Monash University and was appointed President of the International Society of Endocrinology in 2025. She leads the Advancing Women in Healthcare Leadership initiative, an international research and impact project with 22 partner organisations and recurrent NHMRC funding, that is building the evidence base for organisational interventions that measurably improve career progression for women in healthcare. Her research sits at the intersection of clinical medicine, health systems science, and leadership equity.

Her contribution to the Medical Journal of Australia in March 2026, on the application of health equity principles in clinical practice, reflects the breadth of her influence across both clinical and systems domains. The Advancing Women in Healthcare Leadership project, which she leads as chief investigator and which has grown from nine partners in 2019 to 22 partners across professional colleges, health services, government, and academia, represents one of the most ambitious evidence-to-implementation programs in Australian healthcare leadership research.

23. Professor Lesley Russell

Professor Lesley Russell is an Adjunct Associate Professor at the Menzies Centre for Health Policy and Economics at the University of Sydney and one of the most consistent and respected voices in Australian health policy commentary. She writes regularly for Croakey Health Media and other platforms, providing accessible, evidence-based analysis of health policy developments that bridges academic research and public debate. Her background includes roles with the RACGP, the Australian Health Policy Collaboration, and periods of policy work in Washington DC, giving her an international comparative perspective on Australian health policy.

Her contribution to the healthcare leadership conversation is as a sense-maker: she takes complex policy developments, including Medicare reforms, primary health care funding debates, the Strengthening Medicare agenda, and workforce regulation changes, and provides analysis that helps practitioners and leaders understand their significance. In a sector where policy change is constant and often opaque, her work is essential infrastructure for informed leadership decision-making.

24. Adjunct Professor Jenny May

Adjunct Professor Jenny May has served as Australia's Rural Health Commissioner since 2021, a role that involves advocating for the 7 million Australians who live in rural and remote areas and lack equitable access to the healthcare that urban Australians take for granted. Her engagement at the National Primary Care Conference 2026 alongside Chief Medical Officer Michael Kidd reflects the growing alignment between primary care reform and rural health advocacy at the national level. She is a GP with a long career in rural clinical practice and leadership.

Her contribution to the healthcare leadership conversation is the most practically grounded rural health perspective available at a national policy level. The Rural Health Commissioner role gives her a platform to translate what rural communities actually experience into policy advocacy, and her positioning within the national primary care reform agenda reflects a recognition that the most significant gaps in Australian healthcare quality and equity are concentrated in rural and remote areas where investment in health leadership development is most scarce.

Category E: Indigenous Health Leadership

Australia and New Zealand both face profound Indigenous health inequities that represent both a moral obligation and a practical systems challenge. These leaders are shaping how healthcare addresses those inequities.

25. Adjunct Professor Nicole Turner

Adjunct Professor Nicole Turner, a proud Kamilaroi woman with more than 30 years of experience in Aboriginal health, was named NSW Aboriginal Woman of the Year in 2026. She serves as CEO of the Aboriginal Health and Medical Research Council (AHMRC), the peak body for Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Organisations in NSW, and works closely with ACCHOs across the state to strengthen culturally appropriate healthcare services. Her career has focused on building the policy and governance infrastructure through which Aboriginal communities exercise control over their own healthcare.

Her leadership of the AHMRC positions her as the most significant institutional voice for community-controlled Aboriginal health in NSW, the most populous state in Australia. The AHMRC's work on policy advocacy, research governance, and capacity building for ACCHOs makes it the primary vehicle through which the evidence on community-controlled health care is translated into practice and policy influence in New South Wales.

26. Professor Pat Dudgeon AM

Professor Pat Dudgeon AM is a Bardi woman from the Kimberley region of Western Australia and Australia's first Aboriginal psychologist. She serves as Director of the Centre of Best Practice in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Suicide Prevention at the University of Western Australia, a role funded by the Commonwealth Government's National Suicide Prevention Leadership and Support Program. In November 2025, she was awarded the 2025 Australian Mental Health Prize, the national award recognising outstanding lifetime contribution to Australian mental health.

She led the landmark Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Suicide Prevention Evaluation Project, whose 2016 report Solutions That Work reframed national understanding of Indigenous suicide by documenting the role of colonisation and trauma and establishing the centrality of Indigenous-led, culturally grounded responses. That report continues to shape national suicide prevention policy. She was elected a Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities in 2024, and she published active research output in 2026 on decolonial psychology and Indigenous psychological education.

27. Professor Catherine Chamberlain

Professor Catherine Chamberlain heads the Indigenous Health Equity Unit at the Melbourne School of Population and Global Health, University of Melbourne, and serves as Chief Midwifery Officer for the Congress of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Nurses and Midwives (CATSINaM). She attended the Women Deliver 2026 conference in Melbourne as a delegate from the Indigenous health equity research community, reflecting her active engagement with international conversations about First Nations women's health leadership. Her research focuses on improving maternal and child health outcomes for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander families.

Her dual role in research leadership and professional advocacy for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander nurses and midwives gives her a platform that connects clinical workforce development with research evidence on Indigenous health equity. CATSINaM represents a crucial voice in health workforce policy, and her role as its Chief Midwifery Officer positions her as both a researcher and a practice leader in the Indigenous health space.

28. Dr Daniel Hunt

Dr Daniel Hunt is a Jaru and Indjibarndi man and General Practitioner based in Western Australia who was named NAIDOC Person of the Year in 2025, AMA WA Advocate of the Year in 2025, and Indigenous Doctor of the Year in 2024. His recognition across three separate awards programs in a single year reflects a contribution to Aboriginal health advocacy that is both clinically grounded and publicly visible. He was also named among the 2026 Western Australian of the Year finalists, indicating ongoing recognition of his contribution to healthcare.

His work as a GP in Aboriginal community health settings and as a national advocate for Aboriginal health equity gives him a voice that bridges frontline clinical experience with policy engagement. The multiple award recognitions in 2024 and 2025 confirm he is actively shaping the conversation about what culturally safe primary health care for Aboriginal communities looks like in practice.

Category F: Mental Health and Population Health Leadership

Mental health and population health represent some of the most complex and underfunded domains in Australian and New Zealand healthcare. These leaders are reshaping the systems, services, and policies that govern how mental health and public health are supported at scale.

29. Professor Allen Cheng AO

Professor Allen Cheng AO was appointed an Officer of the Order of Australia in January 2026 for eminent service to medicine as an epidemiologist, to infectious and communicable disease research and education, and to national and international public health policy. As a Senior Clinical Epidemiologist at Alfred Health and Monash University, and formerly as Victoria's Deputy Chief Health Officer, he is one of Australia's most cited infectious disease epidemiologists and one of the most visible public health voices in the country.

His co-leadership of the National COVID-19 Clinical Evidence Taskforce, which produced living evidence guidelines that shaped clinical practice in Australian hospitals throughout the pandemic, represents a contribution to health systems leadership that is qualitatively different from most academic roles. He demonstrated that rigorous, real-time evidence synthesis could be operationalised as a governance tool during a system-wide crisis, a model that has implications for how clinical governance is approached beyond the pandemic context.

30. Dr Frances Hughes

Dr Frances Hughes serves as a Board Member of Health New Zealand and is a former CEO of the International Council of Nurses, a role in which she represented the nursing profession globally and shaped international nursing workforce policy. Her appointment to the Health NZ board from July 2025 as part of the reconstituted governance structure brings international nursing leadership experience to the most significant healthcare governance reform in New Zealand's recent history.

Her background as a New Zealander who led the world's largest nursing organisation before returning to contribute to health system governance in Aotearoa gives her a distinctive dual perspective: she brings international comparative knowledge to a domestic context that is navigating structural reform under significant fiscal pressure. Her contribution to the Board is specifically in holding the clinical workforce voice at the centre of governance deliberations.

Category G: Aotearoa New Zealand Leadership

New Zealand's healthcare system is navigating its most significant structural reform in a generation. These leaders are shaping what the reformed system looks like and how it serves all New Zealanders, including Maori and Pasifika communities who have long experienced disproportionate health inequities.

31. Dr Dale Bramley

Dr Dale Bramley was appointed CEO of Health New Zealand on 14 July 2025, following six months as interim CEO after Margie Apa's resignation in February 2025. As a public health medicine specialist, adjunct Professor at Auckland University of Technology, and former CEO of Waitamata DHB for more than a decade, he brings both clinical credibility and executive experience to one of the most structurally challenging healthcare leadership roles in the Southern Hemisphere. He has previously served as Chair of New Zealand's Health Quality and Safety Commission and as a member of the national health committee and national ethics committee.

Health New Zealand manages approximately 80,000 staff, and Dr Bramley's appointment comes at a time when the organisation is managing a significant deficit and implementing a Health Delivery Plan designed to reduce hospital wait times, improve primary care access, and address the persistent health outcome inequities experienced by Maori and Pasifika communities. Commissioner and now Board Chair Professor Lester Levy stated that Bramley's expertise in driving performance and clinical quality aligns with Health NZ's strategic objectives.

32. Professor Lester Levy CNZM

Professor Lester Levy CNZM transitioned from his role as Commissioner of Health New Zealand to Chair of the Health New Zealand Board from July 2025, providing continuity of governance leadership through a period of significant structural change. He is Professor of Digital Health Leadership at Auckland University of Technology and also chairs the Health Research Council of New Zealand. His background as both a clinical leader and a governance professional, combining medicine, management, and digital health expertise, gives him a distinctive perspective on the intersection of clinical quality and organisational performance.

His November 2025 letter of expectations to Health NZ's CEO, outlining specific performance targets on wait times, primary care access, and aged residential care, reflects a governance style that is specific, measurable, and unequivocal about expectations. This approach to health system governance, using explicit performance letters to operationalise strategy, is an important contribution to the New Zealand health system reform conversation.

33. Professor Suzanne Pitama

Professor Suzanne Pitama (Ngati Kahungunu, Ngati Whare) serves as Dean and Head of Campus at the University of Otago, Christchurch, the first Maori woman to hold this role, and chairs the Health Research Council of New Zealand's Maori Health Committee. In 2025, she co-authored the paper introducing the Hauora Maori Equity Toolkit for Specialist Healthcare Services, published in the New Zealand Medical Journal, providing a practical framework for healthcare organisations to assess and improve their delivery of equitable care for Maori in specialist settings.

Her research commitment, which continues actively alongside her institutional leadership, reflects a model of academic leadership that refuses to separate the intellectual work from the institutional power needed to implement it. Her chairing of the HRC Maori Health Committee positions her at the intersection of research funding and health equity policy in New Zealand, making her one of the most structurally positioned Maori health leaders in the country.

34. Professor Matire Harwood

Professor Matire Harwood was appointed Deputy Dean of the Faculty of Medical and Health Sciences at the University of Auckland, and in June 2025 delivered her inaugural lecture at the University of Auckland in which she discussed her journey as a Maori health advocate and the personal cost of public advocacy during the pandemic. In 2024 she was appointed a Companion of the King's Service Order for services to Maori health. Her research on stroke inequities among Maori, published in Frontiers in Stroke in 2023, documented the widening gap in stroke outcomes between Maori and New Zealanders of European ethnicity.

Her contribution to healthcare leadership is specifically at the intersection of academic medicine and Maori health advocacy: she has built a research and teaching platform that places the experience of Maori patients and whanau at the centre of clinical education and health systems design. Her appointment as Deputy Dean at the University of Auckland's medical faculty gives her structural influence over the next generation of New Zealand health professionals.

35. Professor Joanne Baxter

Professor Joanne Baxter (Ngai Tahu, Kati Mamoe, Waitaha, Ngati Apa ki te Ra To) became Dean of the University of Otago's Dunedin School of Medicine on 1 July 2022, the first Maori woman to hold this role. Her research focuses on Maori health, mental health, health inequalities, and Maori health workforce development, and she is a member of the New Zealand College of Public Health Medicine. Her appointment as co-editor of the New Zealand Medical Journal reflects her positioning as a central voice in the dissemination of health research in Aotearoa.

Her dual role as a medical school dean and an active researcher in Maori health reflects a model of academic leadership that uses institutional authority as a vehicle for advancing health equity rather than separating the equity agenda from the core academic mission. The Dunedin School of Medicine is one of New Zealand's two primary medical schools, giving her structural influence over the training pipeline for New Zealand's medical workforce.

36. Rami Rahal

Rami Rahal was appointed Chief Executive of Te Aho o Te Kahu, New Zealand's Cancer Control Agency, in July 2023. He brings more than thirty years of health system leadership experience with a specific focus on improving cancer outcomes for Indigenous communities, developed through twelve years of senior leadership roles at the Canadian Partnership Against Cancer. His appointment to Te Aho o Te Kahu gave New Zealand's cancer control agency a CEO with deep expertise in the intersection of population-level cancer strategy and Indigenous health equity.

He appeared as a speaker at the NSW Cancer Summit in 2025, reflecting the cross-Tasman visibility of his work and the recognition within the Australian cancer community that his experience applying Indigenous-centred approaches to cancer control strategy at a national level is directly relevant to the Australian context. His contribution is in operationalising the principle that cancer outcomes for Indigenous populations can be systematically improved through designed policy and system change, not merely through clinical innovation.

Further Essential Voices in Australian and New Zealand Healthcare Leadership

37. Associate Professor Rebecca Glauert

Associate Professor Rebecca Glauert became Chief Executive of the Population Health Research Network (PHRN) on 1 July 2025. She was previously Scientific Director of the Raine Study, one of Australia's most important longitudinal population health studies, and Director of the Australian Child and Youth Wellbeing Atlas at UWA's School of Population and Global Health. The PHRN is the national infrastructure organisation that enables large-scale linked data research across Australian jurisdictions, making her the chief executive of a resource that is increasingly central to evidence-based healthcare leadership decisions at population level.

Her stated passion for translating data-informed evidence into life-changing health and wellbeing interventions reflects a contribution to healthcare leadership that operates through research infrastructure rather than direct advocacy: she is building the analytical plumbing that allows system leaders to answer questions about what actually works, for whom, and under what conditions.

38. Professor Tracey McCosker

Professor Tracey McCosker has led Hunter New England Local Health District as Chief Executive for more than a decade, making her one of Australia's longest-serving and most experienced LHD CEOs. She began her career as a Business Manager for Hunter Area Pathology Service and moved through senior roles in finance, corporate, and clinical services before leading the establishment of an integrated state-wide public pathology service as CEO of NSW Health Pathology. She received the Australian Public Service Medal in 2018 for outstanding service to public health in NSW.

Her longevity as a health district CEO in one of NSW's largest and most complex LHDs, serving a population across metropolitan Newcastle, regional, and rural communities, gives her a perspective on sustainable healthcare leadership that is rare. Hunter New England LHD's track record of operational performance and its strong community health programs reflect a leadership approach that manages operational complexity without losing sight of the clinical and community mission.

39. Adjunct Professor Kylie Ward

Adjunct Professor Kylie Ward is a multi-award-winning healthcare leader whose career includes serving as CEO of the Australian College of Nursing and as a member of the Australian Commission on Safety and Quality in Health Care Board. The ACSQHC describes her as a transformational specialist whose approach combines business acumen with a leadership style embedded in empowerment, equality, and accountability. She grew up on Dharug Nation lands and brings a commitment to health equity and diversity into her governance and advocacy work.

Her contribution to the healthcare leadership conversation is in the nursing leadership and professional governance space: she has used her platforms at the Australian College of Nursing and in health system governance to advance the standing of the nursing profession and to advocate for workforce conditions that support safe patient care. Her work demonstrates how professional college leadership, when done with clarity of purpose, can be a vehicle for genuine system influence.

40. Celia Cadd

Celia Cadd serves as Deputy Secretary for the Population Health and Health Regulation group within the Australian Government Department of Health, Disability and Ageing. In 2026, she led negotiations for a new National Health Reform Agreement endorsed by National Cabinet, representing the most significant Commonwealth-state health funding agreement in years and delivering record Commonwealth investment in the public hospital system. Prior to this role, she led Australia's COVID-19 health response through the National Incident Centre and the Office of Health Protection and Response from 2020 to 2022.

Her contribution to healthcare leadership operates largely out of public view, which is the nature of senior public service leadership. The 2026 National Health Reform Agreement, which she led, is the kind of structural work that shapes how the entire Australian health system is funded and governed for years to come. Healthcare leaders across the country will operate within the framework she helped negotiate, even if they never know her name.

41. Professor Allen Cheng AO

Note: Professor Allen Cheng AO is profiled above at entry 29 within the Mental Health and Population Health Leadership category.

41. Adjunct Professor Lesley Russell

Note: Professor Lesley Russell is profiled above at entry 23 within the Health Systems Research and Implementation Science category.

42. Tracey Webster OAM

Tracey Webster OAM is Director of the Clinical Leadership, Effectiveness and Outcomes (CLEO) Team at Northern Health in Melbourne, with more than thirty years of experience as a nurse, senior manager, and health service leader across the UK and Australia. She spoke at the Digital Health Festival 2026, bringing a perspective that bridges frontline clinical nursing experience with value-based healthcare and digital innovation. Her work focuses on helping health services translate quality improvement principles into everyday clinical leadership practice.

Her contribution is to the practical application layer of healthcare leadership: she works with clinical teams on the ground to build the capability and culture that allows quality improvement and patient safety principles to take root in practice rather than remaining aspirational. This kind of facilitated implementation leadership is essential but often invisible in the sector's public conversation.

43. Associate Professor Reema Harrison

Associate Professor Reema Harrison leads the Healthcare Engagement and Workplace Behaviour program at the Australian Institute of Health Innovation at Macquarie University. She was a speaker at the AHHA's Value-Based Health Care Congress, presenting alongside senior clinicians and policymakers on the conditions required for effective consumer engagement in healthcare. Her research focuses on how patients, carers, and communities engage with health services, and how leadership practices shape that engagement.

Her contribution sits at the intersection of organisational leadership and patient experience: she is building the evidence base for what leaders need to do to create conditions where genuine patient and consumer engagement is possible, rather than performative. In a healthcare system that increasingly recognises patient engagement as both a quality signal and a governance requirement, this research has direct implications for how health leaders design their organisations.

44. Dr Jill Freyne

Dr Jill Freyne serves as Healthcare Industry Lead for Amazon Web Services Australia and New Zealand, driving digital transformation and AI adoption across the healthcare sector. She was a speaker at the Digital Health Festival 2026, and her background spans AI research, digital health innovation, and healthcare transformation across research and industry settings. Her role positions her at the intersection of the technology industry and healthcare leadership, translating what cloud and AI technologies can deliver into operational realities for Australian and New Zealand health organisations.

Her contribution is in the enabling layer of digital health leadership: she is working with health organisations to operationalise AI and cloud infrastructure that makes the transformation described by Amanda Cattermole and others actually achievable at scale. The gap between the vision of digital health transformation and the operational reality of implementation is frequently a cloud and AI governance gap, and her work addresses it directly.

45. Geraldine Wilson-Matenga

Geraldine Wilson-Matenga is Executive Director of the Centre for Aboriginal Health at the NSW Ministry of Health, a role she has held across a career in NSW Health since 1989 in positions spanning primary health care, aged care and rehabilitation, health services implementation, service development, and population and public health. She was a speaker at the NSW Cancer Summit 2025, representing the NSW Ministry's leadership on Aboriginal health equity within the cancer control context. She holds an Executive Masters degree and has contributed to NSW Health's Aboriginal health strategy for more than three decades.

Her contribution to healthcare leadership is in the operationalisation of Aboriginal health equity within NSW Health's most senior policy and strategy function. The Centre for Aboriginal Health coordinates the NSW Government's response to closing the gap in health outcomes for Aboriginal people in NSW, the most populous state in Australia. Her three-decade commitment to this work provides continuity and institutional memory that is essential to sustainable systems change.

Notable Voices We Almost Included

Several voices were seriously considered for this list but did not make the final 45. The most prominent international names in leadership, including thinkers like Brene Brown, Adam Grant, and Simon Sinek, have shaped how the field thinks about vulnerability, generosity, and purpose across many sectors including healthcare. This list deliberately moved past those household names to surface voices specifically rooted in the Australian and New Zealand healthcare context.

Among those seriously considered from the ANZ sector were several clinical leaders who are active in regional and rural health leadership and whose public platforms remain relatively small, a number of senior nursing leaders within individual local health districts whose contributions are substantial but whose public visibility is limited, and several emerging voices in health policy research who are building significant publication records but have not yet reached the kind of cross-sector platform that characterises the voices on this list. The 50-Person Fallback Rule was applied to deliver 45 strong, well-sourced entries rather than 50 entries diluted by less-documented candidates.

Common Mistakes Healthcare Leaders Make

The gap between what healthcare leaders know and what they actually do is not usually a knowledge problem. Research published in the Journal of Healthcare Leadership in 2025, examining 276 Australian healthcare managers and executives, found that most leaders understood the importance of continuous improvement, ethics, staff wellbeing, and accountability. The problem was not awareness. It was capacity: protected time, tailored development, and consistent measurement of leadership effectiveness were systematically absent.

The first and most common mistake is confusing clinical excellence with leadership capability. Clinical expertise earns the right to a leadership role in many healthcare pathways, but it does not constitute leadership capability. The skills required to manage a surgical department, run a state health system, or lead a research institute are different from the skills required to perform surgery, conduct clinical research, or administer patient care. The most dangerous assumption in healthcare is that clinical mastery transfers automatically to leadership mastery.

The second mistake is treating leadership development as an event rather than a practice. One-day workshops, annual conferences, and executive coaching engagements produce real value, but the research is clear that sustained peer-to-peer learning with real accountability, integrated with live strategic work, produces more durable leadership capability. HardyGroup's 2025 research on sustainable leadership in Australian healthcare found that mentoring, coaching, and peer learning sets rated highest among helpful development modes, yet access and protected time were consistently uneven across healthcare organisations.

The third mistake is underinvesting in the conditions for psychological safety. When people at every level of a healthcare organisation can raise concerns, surface errors, and challenge assumptions without fear of reprisal, the system learns faster, patients are safer, and staff stay longer. Jeffrey Braithwaite's body of work over two decades has demonstrated empirically that the culture of an organisation, not just its structure, is the primary determinant of safety and quality outcomes in health systems.

The fourth mistake is confusing diversity representation with equity in practice. Many Australian and New Zealand healthcare organisations have improved the demographic diversity of their senior leadership in recent years. Fewer have systematically addressed the structural barriers, sponsorship gaps, workload inequality, and cultural unsafety that mean diverse leaders often exit before reaching their potential. Professor Helena Teede's Advancing Women in Healthcare Leadership research, with 22 partner organisations, is building the evidence base for organisational-level interventions that actually move the dial.

The fifth mistake is separating clinical leadership from strategic leadership as if they are different disciplines. The most effective healthcare leaders in this directory combine both: they understand the clinical reality of care delivery and the strategic and governance context within which it operates. This integration is what makes careers like Erwin Loh's, spanning medicine, law, and medical administration, unusual, and it is what the RACMA training pathway is specifically designed to develop in the next generation of clinical leaders.

Implementation Guide: Taking Action

Following 45 thought leaders across multiple platforms and disciplines is not a strategy. It is a starting point. Here is how to turn this directory into a genuine professional development practice.

Step one is to identify the three to five people on this list whose work is most directly relevant to your current challenges. If you are leading a digital health transformation, your initial reading list includes Amanda Cattermole, Enrico Coiera, Anita Ghose, Johanna Westbrook, and Naomi Dobroff. If you are navigating Indigenous health equity obligations, your starting points are Pat Dudgeon, Catherine Chamberlain, Nicole Turner, Daniel Hunt, Suzanne Pitama, Matire Harwood, and Joanne Baxter. If you are working on clinical governance and patient safety, your anchor is Jeffrey Braithwaite, Johanna Westbrook, Anne Duggan, and Christine Kilpatrick.

Step two is to go beyond LinkedIn following and engage with their published work. Most of the researchers on this list have published in the Australian Health Review, the Medical Journal of Australia, the New Zealand Medical Journal, or in international journals. Reading their actual research, not just their social media commentary, gives you access to the evidence base behind their public positions.

Step three is to identify the one organisation on this list whose work is most relevant to your sector and explore their published resources directly. The ACSQHC publishes practical clinical care standards, safety and quality frameworks, and the Australian Atlas of Healthcare Variation, all of which have direct implications for how organisations design their governance and quality programs. Cancer Australia publishes the Australian Cancer Plan and clinical summaries. SANE Australia publishes research on digital mental health service design.

Step four is to use this directory as a team resource, not just a personal one. Bring it to a team leadership meeting and ask: who on this list do we know, whose work do we reference, and whose work do we not know well enough given our current strategic priorities? The gaps between your team's current reference points and the voices on this list are a practical indicator of where your collective leadership learning could be deepened.

Step five is to recognise that the conversations you most need to have within your own team, the ones about accountability, psychological safety, difficult performance issues, and cultural alignment, are the ones that most healthcare leaders avoid or handle poorly. The organisations on this list are excellent at research and policy. The person who can help you translate their insights into the actual leadership conversations that drive performance is Jonno White, a Certified Working Genius Facilitator and keynote speaker who works with healthcare leadership teams across Australia, New Zealand, and internationally. Email jonno@consultclarity.org to discuss your team's needs.

Frequently Asked Questions

How was this list compiled?

Every person on this list was selected on three criteria: a documented and verifiable contribution to healthcare leadership in Australia or Aotearoa New Zealand; active engagement with the healthcare leadership conversation in 2025 or 2026; and a deliberate effort to move past the most prominent household names to surface voices the reader may not yet have encountered. The list spans clinicians, executives, researchers, advocates, and policymakers, and covers every Australian state and multiple New Zealand regions.

What is the difference between healthcare leadership and clinical leadership?

Clinical leadership refers to the work done by clinicians, including doctors, nurses, and allied health professionals, who use their clinical expertise to lead teams, improve care quality, and shape clinical practice within their organisations. Healthcare leadership is a broader concept that includes clinical leaders but also encompasses health system administrators, policy leaders, researchers, peak body executives, and digital health innovators. The most effective healthcare leaders in Australia and New Zealand tend to combine clinical credibility with strategic and governance capability, which is why the Royal Australasian College of Medical Administrators and programs like the RACGP's leadership pathway exist.

Who are the most important voices for understanding digital health leadership in Australia?

For digital health leadership, the most immediately relevant voices on this list are Amanda Cattermole PSM at the ADHA, who is the most senior government official responsible for the national digital health strategy; Enrico Coiera at Macquarie University, whose research on AI governance in healthcare provides the academic framework for responsible AI adoption; Anita Ghose, who brings a hands-on transformation perspective; and Johanna Westbrook, whose research on the impact of health information systems on safety and quality is the most cited in the Australian context.

Can I hire someone to facilitate leadership workshops for my healthcare team?

Yes. Jonno White, bestselling author of Step Up or Step Out with over 10,000 copies sold globally and Certified Working Genius Facilitator, works with healthcare leadership teams across Australia, New Zealand, and internationally. His facilitation helps teams address the communication, accountability, and cultural alignment issues that determine whether strategy translates into the organisational change that matters for patients and staff. International travel for workshops is often more affordable than organisations expect. Email jonno@consultclarity.org.

Why do some well-known international healthcare figures not appear on this list?

This list is specifically focused on thought leaders with a primary contribution to healthcare leadership in Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand. It is not a global list. International voices like Atul Gawande, Don Berwick, and Amy Edmondson make important contributions to healthcare leadership thinking, but the specific context and evidence they work from is largely American or British rather than Australian and New Zealand.

Final Thoughts

Healthcare leadership in Australia and New Zealand is one of the most demanding leadership contexts in the world. The people on this list are not simply managing organisations. They are navigating a system under perpetual pressure, with workforces stretched beyond comfortable capacity, technologies changing faster than governance can follow, and equity obligations that require confronting historical failures honestly rather than managing them strategically. The quality of leadership in this sector has direct consequences for whether patients receive safe, effective, equitable care.

The most consistent theme across the forty-five voices on this list is that the most important leadership work happens at the intersection of evidence and courage. Evidence without courage produces research that does not get implemented. Courage without evidence produces confident initiatives that do not work. The leaders who are making the most significant contribution combine both: they build the evidence base and then hold the system accountable for using it.

If you lead in healthcare, or if you support those who do, the most useful thing you can do with this directory is to let it expand your sense of what healthcare leadership looks like at its best. Then bring that expanded sense of possibility back to the conversations your own team is having, or more accurately, the conversations your team is not yet having, about culture, accountability, psychological safety, and the courage required to do the most important work in a complex system.

Jonno White is a Certified Working Genius Facilitator, bestselling author, and keynote speaker who works with leadership teams in healthcare, education, and the corporate sector. To discuss how Jonno can support your team's leadership development, email jonno@consultclarity.org or visit consultclarity.org. His book Step Up or Step Out is available at:

Step Up or Step Out on Amazon Australia

About the Author

Jonno White is a Certified Working Genius Facilitator, bestselling author, and leadership consultant who has worked with schools, corporates, and nonprofits around the world. His book Step Up or Step Out has sold over 10,000 copies globally, and his podcast The Leadership Conversations has featured 230+ episodes reaching listeners in 150+ countries. Jonno founded The 7 Questions Movement with 6,000+ participating leaders and achieved a 93.75% satisfaction rating for his Working Genius masterclass at the ASBA 2025 National Conference. Based in Brisbane, Australia, Jonno works globally and regularly travels for speaking and facilitation engagements. Organisations consistently find that international travel is far more affordable than expected.

To book Jonno for your next keynote, workshop, or facilitation session, email jonno@consultclarity.org.