- Posted on 4 Jul 2025
- 2-minute read
The Jumbunna Institute and UTS Business School have appointed Professor Jane O’Leary as Research Director for a two-year term to the Centre for Indigenous People and Work.
Professor O’Leary is the country’s preeminent industry-based, employment diversity researcher. Jane will establish the Centre’s rigorous, industry and community-based research function.
During this time, she will develop this function of the Centre, support and develop Indigenous employment researchers and work with the Centre’s Indigenous leadership to develop a succession plan to hand over the position to an Indigenous researcher. Professor O’Leary commences on Monday, 13 July 2025.
In 2009, she established Diversity Council Australia’s current research function, which has had an enormous impact on Australia’s workplaces. Since then, she has conceptualised and delivered many influential projects including Australia’s first research on how employers can make flexible work standard business practice (Get Flexible! Men Get Flexible! and Future-Flex), the power of inclusive language (Words at Work), why class counts at work (Class at Work, 2020), the state of inclusion in Australia’s workforce (Inclusion@Work Index), mapping the cultural diversity of ASX leaders (Capitalising on Culture and Capitalising on Culture and Gender), how to measure and report on workforce cultural diversity (Counting Culture).
Since 2020, Professor O’Leary has worked on the groundbreaking Gari Yala research report and recommendations with Indigenous researchers and will continue to do so with Dr Olivia Evans (Gomeroi, Australian National University) and Joshua Gilbert (Centre for Indigenous People and Work), led by Professor Nareen Young.
Professor O’Leary’s work in influencing Diversity and Inclusion employment practice in Australia is unparalleled.
Professor Nareen Young, Director of the Centre for Indigenous People and Work, said:
Professor O’Leary and I have worked together for many years, including over the last five as we worked on the first Gari Yala piece when she was Research Director at Diversity Council Australia, and we are delighted that she has taken up the appointment to work with us as we develop our research capacity. Not only is Professor O’Leary’s work in employment diversity research without peer, her respect for First Nations peoples, and indeed all peoples, and our ways and self-determination are exemplary in all our experience, which has been immense, as is her approach to deeply inclusive work practices.
We are very fortunate that Professor O’Leary has agreed to work with our Centre for this period to establish our research function, which will benefit our mob in Australia’s workplaces in every way. Gari Yala has had such impact, and as it now a project of the Centre for Indigenous People and work, her appointment could not have come at a better time and this team, including Centre Assistant Director Joshua Gilbert and our Advisory Council of Indigenous employment leaders, sets us up so well to truly change the ‘Indigenous employment’ narrative.
Professor Lindon Coombes, Director, UTS Jumbunna Institute for Indigenous Research, said:
We are delighted that Jumbunna and the Centre for Indigenous People and Work can attract prestigious talent like Professor O’Leary to work in a proper and appropriate way to develop Blak researchers and the discrete employment research foundation.
“At Jumbunna one of our goals is developing Indigenous researchers and research, and having worked with Professor O’Leary for over five years now, we know that her appointment will achieve both this goal and deep impact for our mob at work. We are very excited and thank Professor Young and Josh Gilbert for their stewardship of the CIPW that is such an exciting joint venture.”
Sara Denize, Interim Dean, UTS Business School, said:
“At the UTS Business School, we are committed to creating and sharing knowledge to create a fairer world. We are delighted that Professor O’Leary will be part of our effort to more deeply consider how the experience of Indigenous People and work is part of the story of Australian truth telling”.
Professor Jane O’Leary said:
“Being appointed as Research Director in such a trusted and highly regarded organisation as the Centre for Indigenous People and Work is an honour and privilege. I’m so excited to have the opportunity to work with Professor Nareen Young to again co-create an impactful industry research function. I am very grateful for the trust placed in me and commit to doing all I can to work with this amazing team, listen, learn and support the Centre’s vision to reclaim the Indigenous employment narrative through rigorous, industry-based Indigenous-led research and set the Centre up for a flourishing future”.