feisty
Technology policy in Australia is being rewritten, and the women leading that work are doing it from inside government departments, research institutes, standards bodies, and industry advocacy groups. They're writing the frameworks that decide how AI gets deployed in healthcare, how personal data moves across borders, and how critical infrastructure gets protected from cyber threats. Their decisions carry weight far beyond any single company's org chart.
Why tech policy leadership matters now
Australia's digital regulation agenda has accelerated sharply. The federal government's ongoing reforms to the Privacy Act, the rollout of the National AI Framework, and the expansion of the Critical Infrastructure Act have created a genuine demand for people who can hold both technical knowledge and policy craft at once. That intersection is where these women operate.
The profile of a tech policy leader in Australia is harder to sketch than, say, a fund manager or a CFO. It cuts across the public sector, academia, civil society, and in-house roles at tech companies. What unites the people below is that their work shapes the rules others must follow, not just within organisations but across entire sectors.
The leaders to know
Katharine Kemp
Katharine Kemp is an associate professor at UNSW Sydney's Faculty of Law and Justice, and one of the most cited voices on Australian consumer data law. Kemp's research focuses on the Consumer Data Right and competition law as it applies to digital platforms. She has appeared before Senate committees and given evidence that has directly shaped how the CDR regime is being extended beyond banking to energy and telecommunications.
Rachael Falk
Rachael Falk serves as CEO of the Cyber Security Cooperative Research Centre, a federally funded body that sits at the junction of academic research and national security policy. Falk's work connects private sector practitioners with government cyber policy in a way few other organisations manage. She also sits on several advisory panels related to critical infrastructure protection.
Alison Connelly
Alison Connelly heads public policy at Amazon Web Services in Australia and New Zealand. In this role Connelly represents AWS in conversations with regulators on cloud sovereignty, data residency, and government procurement of cloud services. She's been a prominent voice in the ongoing development of Australia's Protective Security Policy Framework as it extends to cloud environments.
Lesley Seebeck
Lesley Seebeck is a non-resident fellow at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute and a visiting fellow at the Australian National University's Tech Policy Design Centre. Seebeck spent years inside the Department of Home Affairs overseeing cyber and critical technology policy before moving into research. Her writing on AI governance and strategic competition in technology is widely read inside government.
Johanna Weaver
Johanna Weaver founded and directs the Tech Policy Design Centre at the Australian National University. The centre trains people specifically to write technology policy, a discipline that had no dedicated home in Australia before Weaver built one. She is the architect of Australia's International Cyber and Critical Technology Engagement Strategy and continues to advise government on AI and digital trade issues.
Kate Carruthers
Kate Carruthers is chief data and insights officer at UNSW Sydney and a recognised expert on data governance. Carruthers has spent years shaping how Australian institutions handle data ethics, privacy, and AI accountability. She is a frequent contributor to policy consultations on data strategy and a board member of several technology governance bodies.
Vanessa Teague
Vanessa Teague is a cryptographer and CEO of Thinking Cybersecurity, and she has made a career out of saying things about digital security that governments would sometimes prefer she didn't. Her scrutiny of electronic voting systems, including public audits of the New South Wales iVote system, has produced policy-level changes in how digital democracy infrastructure gets designed and tested in Australia.
Abigail McAlpine
Abigail McAlpine leads technology policy at the Australian Banking Association, where she coordinates the industry's position on payments reform, open banking, and AI in financial services. With the federal government pushing rapid changes to the payments system, McAlpine's work is central to how banks engage with regulators on rules that will affect every Australian household.
What this group shares
These women don't share a single employer, a single background, or a single issue. What they share is a willingness to engage directly with the process by which rules get made, not just critique the outcomes. Several of them have moved between government and the private sector or academia, carrying institutional knowledge in both directions. That movement is itself a feature of Australian tech policy at this moment: the walls between sectors are porous, and the people who cross them repeatedly tend to accumulate real influence.
None of them work in isolation. The Tech Policy Design Centre trains people who end up in government roles. The Cyber Security CRC funds research that informs legislation. The ABA's positions on AI land on the desks of Treasury officials. The connections matter as much as the individual roles.
Where this fits in the broader picture
This list sits alongside a wider pattern in Australian professional life. The women founding and running technology companies are building the products these policy frameworks will govern. The women leading data and analytics functions inside major organisations are the ones implementing the data governance rules these advocates help write. Policy, product, and practice are linked, and the women shaping each domain are increasingly aware of what the others are doing.
Technology policy in Australia is not a spectator sport. The decisions being made now on AI liability, data portability, and digital identity will set the terms for at least the next decade. The women on this list are in the room where those terms get set.