Staff Profile

Dr Aruna Sathanapally joined Grattan Institute as CEO in February 2024. She leads the Institute’s work on economic growth, budgets, and institutional reform. She holds a range of senior advisory positions, including on the Parliamentary Budget Office Expert Panel and the Ministerial Advisory Council on Skilled Migration Expert Subcommittee, and delivered the keynote address on tax reform at the 2025 Economic Reform Roundtable.

A former barrister and senior public servant, Aruna has worked on the design of public institutions, economic policy, and evidence-based public policy and regulation for more than 20 years.

Before joining Grattan Institute, Dr Sathanapally was a senior executive at NSW Treasury for more than five years, leading divisions responsible for revenue and federal financial relations, macroeconomics, and state-owned corporations, and leading the 2021 NSW Intergenerational Report.

Prior to this, she practised as a senior lawyer at the Australian Government Solicitor, defending Australia’s landmark plain packaging laws, and then as a barrister at 12 Wentworth Selborne Chambers with a practice including public law, competition, and inquiries. From 2010 to 2012, she worked globally on regulatory strategy and sustainable development, based at McKinsey & Company’s London office.

Dr Sathanapally holds arts (economics and politics) and law degrees from UNSW, Sydney, where she graduated with the University Medal in Law. She holds two masters degrees in law and a doctorate from the University of Oxford, where she studied as a Menzies Scholar and a John Monash Scholar. She has published internationally in the field of constitutional design, including a monograph with Oxford University Press published in 2012.