Michael Brennan
e61 Institute
Michael Brennan is the Chief Executive Office of the e61 Institute. He is an experienced economic policy professional, having been a former Chair of the Australian Productivity worked as Deputy Secretary of the Australian Treasurer. Michael has also worked as a Deputy Secretary of the Victorian Treasury, as an Associate Director at PWC, and as a senior adviser to Treasurers and Ministers for Finance at the State and Federal level. Michael holds a Bachelor of Economics (Hons) from the Australian National University. 

Gigi Foster
University of New South Wales
Gigi Foster is a Professor within the School of Economics at the University of New South Wales and a Senior Scholar at the Brownstone Institute. She holds a PhD in Economics from the University of Maryland and a Bachelor of Arts in Ethics, Politics, and Economics from Yale University. Professor Foster works in diverse fields including education, social influence, time use, lab experiments, behavioural economics, and Australian policy, publishing in both specialised and cross-disciplinary outlets (e.g., Quantitative Economics, Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, Journal of Population Economics, Journal of Economic Psychology, Human Relations). Named 2019 Young Economist of the Year by the Economic Society of Australia, Gigi has filled numerous roles of service to the profession and engages heavily on economic matters with the Australian community as one of Australia’s leading economics communicators in the media and at live events. Her innovative teaching, featuring strategic innovation and integration with research, was awarded a 2017 Australian Awards for University Teaching (AAUT) Citation for Outstanding Contributions to Student Learning. She co-founded the think tank Australians for Science and Freedom (scienceandfreedom.org) in 2023, and is actively involved in the new higher education experiment Academia Libera Mentis (liberamentis.org). Gigi is an author most recently of The Great Covid Panic (Brownstone Institute 2021, with Paul Frijters and Michael Baker) and Do Lockdowns and Border Closures Serve the “Greater Good”? (Connor Court 2022, with Sanjeev Sabhlok).

Michael Stutchbury
Centre for Independent Studies
Michael Stutchbury is the Executive Director of the Centre for Independent Studies (CIS). Prior to his appointment at CIS, Michael held the role of Editor in Chief at the Australian Financial Review (AFR) for over a decade and has also served as its Washington Correspondent. He has also previously held senior roles at The Australian, including those of Editor and Economics Editor. In his long and distinguished career in journalism, Michael has been at the forefront of the interaction between economics and public policy. He has also worked for the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet and has been a media delegate to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. Michael holds a Bachelor of Economics (Hons) from the University of Adelaide.