Early in her career, Dr Andrea Lanyon identified that applied social research, through which she could help make a difference and improvement in people’s lives and the communities they live in, was her passion. 

Over the next 20 years, she led the design and implementation of a range of policy and program evaluations – the first ten years working out of the University of Queensland and the Queensland University of Technology and the next ten years working with the Queensland Government.

For the past seven years, she has led the modernisation of Australia’s statistical infrastructure (think standards and classifications required to describe national data and registers used to support ABS economic, household and population statistics including the five yearly Census).

In 2022, she led the development of a successful business case to the Australian Government to update Australia’s standard classification of occupation ensuring that occupations are described in gender neutral and more inclusive language and better reflect Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander expertise.

This funding will also deliver a much more efficient and effective machine learning coding capability that can be used across government and industry to significantly improve the quality of Australian labour force data.

She is currently the Chair of the Australian Government Leaders Network – Queensland, a network which aims to develop leadership capability of Queensland public servants, exchange innovative thinking, ideas, knowledge and experiences and promote peer support, collegiality and collaboration.

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