The Hon Gabrielle Upton

BA, LLB, MBA, FAICD, FRSN

The Hon Gabrielle Upton joined The Florey Board in 2024.

Ms Upton has 30 years combined experience as a lawyer, banker, government minister and university Deputy Chancellor.

She is Strategic Advisor at Proto Axiom, a medical biotechnology investment fund, and at King Wood Mallesons. She also serves as an Advisory Board Member of the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Quantum Biotechnology and as a Board Member of Netball Australia.

From 2011 to 2023, Ms Upton served in senior NSW Government roles including as the first female NSW Attorney General, Minister for the Environment, Local Government and Heritage, Minister for Family and Community Services and Minister for Sport and Recreation. In Government, she led both the inaugural $500 million Accelerating R&D in NSW Strategy and the container deposit scheme, Return and Earn.

Ms Upton was Deputy Chancellor of the University of New South Wales from 2006 until 2009 and on the University Council from 2002. From 2005 to 2011 she was Deputy Chair of the Duke of Edinburgh’s Awards Australia and a Board Member of Neuroscience Research Australia (NeuRA) from 2007 to 2011.

Her career began as a corporate lawyer with legal firms Herbert Smith Freehills and DLA Piper and as a banker with Deutsche Bank and Toronto-Dominion Bank in New York. She served on the Corporate Markets and Advisory Committee to the Federal Government and as Legal Counsel at the Australian Institute of Company Directors from 2000 to 2010.

Ms Upton has a Bachelor of Arts and Bachelor of Laws from the University of New South Wales, a Master of Business Administration from New York University’s Leonard Stern School of Business and graduated in 2022 from Harvard Business School’s Advanced Management Program 203. She is a Fellow of the Australian Institute of Company Directors and of the Royal Society of NSW.