Professor Kristy Muir

Professor Kristy Muir is the CEO of the Centre for Social Impact (CSI) and a Professor of Social Policy in the Business School at UNSW Sydney.

She is an elected member of UNSW Sydney’s Council (member of the Finance and Business Committee), the Chair of Allan & Gill Gray Philanthropy Australasia, a Non-Executive Director of the Australian Research Alliance for Children & Youth, Chair of ARACY’s Audit and Risk Committee and a member of the NSW Premier’s Council on Homelessness.

Kristy has worked for almost three decades with for-purpose organisations. She is driven to better understand and find solutions to complex social problems and measure whether and where we are making a difference.

She has undertaken over 80 projects with many government, not-for-profit, corporate, academic and philanthropic organisations. These projects have attracted almost $28.5 million in funding.

Her research spans the for-purpose sector, charities, housing, education, employment, social participation, disability, mental health, financial resilience and wellbeing. She has published widely in policy, sociology, social work, history and public health journals and in publicly accessible and popular media, such as TEDx, The Mandarin, The Guardian and The Conversation.

Kristy is an excellent educator and public speaker. She frequently gives invited keynotes, runs workshops on applied systems thinking, facilitates board strategy planning days, and she founded and teaches the highly regarded Governance for Social Impact course for Non-Executive Directors.

Kristy founded CSI’s Change Collection series and Amplify Social Impact - one her most innovative and potentially transformational capacity building projects. She is a founding partner and governance member of the Financial Inclusion Action Plan and The Constellation Project.

Kristy was formerly CSI’s Research Director (2013-15), the Associate Dean Research (Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, 2011-13) and the Director of the Disability Studies and Research Centre (2009-2010) at UNSW Sydney.

She has a PhD in social history, is a graduate of the AICD and Sydney Leadership and, prior to joining academia, worked in the not-for-profit sector.