Professor Kristy Muir, the Centre for Social Impact’s (CSI) Chief Executive Officer, has announced that she is moving to the Paul Ramsay Foundation after spending five years in the role.

Muir took the CSI CEO reins in January 2017 and has successfully turned the organisation around regarding financial stability, strategy, leadership and impact with and across sectors.

Muir will complete her 5-year term, transitioning out of the CEO role and into the new role between October and December. She will be stepping into a newly created Chief Alliances Officer role at the Paul Ramsay Foundation.

Professor Peter Shergold, CSI’s board chair said that while he was saddened to lose Kristy, he was excited by the potential of her new role in improving social impact in Australia. CSI will begin searching for a new CEO immediately through a recruitment agency.

“With Kristy Muir at the helm, the Centre for Social Impact has gone from strength to strength. She embedded and delivered on an ambitious and optimistic strategy, and has secured CSI’s sustainability for no doubt a long, long time to come,” said Shergold.

He continued: “While I’ll miss working with Kristy, I’m really excited to see what she can achieve at the Paul Ramsay Foundation. Her expertise in mobilising cross-sector partnerships and turning ideas into action to achieve social impact is unparalleled.”

Michael Traill, Paul Ramsay Foundation board chair said that the addition of Kristy Muir to the Paul Ramsay Foundation team was an important and strategic decision at a pivotal point in the Foundation’s development.

“With so many incredible partnerships funded by the Foundation, we want to ensure the learnings and innovations from that work is leveraged for wider impact,” Traill said.

“The Alliances Team led by Kristy will work to amplify the impact of the Foundation’s partnerships and insights on the policies, decisions and approaches of others including government.

“This work can only be achieved by forging strong alliances with stakeholders with aligned goals and those who want to leverage their giving, such as peer philanthropy foundations, not for profit and businesses who are purpose-aligned.”

The Foundation’s CEO Professor Glyn Davis said the Foundation very much looked forward to Kristy starting in the role.

“I have admired Kristy’s academic and philanthropic leadership over a number of years, and she is the perfect choice for this new role in our team. Kristy has a track record of working with, and across sectors to achieve lasting change,” Davis said.

“Kristy Muir’s appointment is part of our plans to lift our engagement, strengthen alliances and build new coalitions with others who share our ambition to break cycles of disadvantage and enable people to realise their potential.”

Muir will maintain her professorship with the UNSW Business School and continue to deliver on key projects aligned to academic capacity building and in an advisory capacity at CSI and at the Faculty of Art, Design and Architecture.

Muir said: “Being CEO at CSI has undoubtedly been one of my career’s greatest achievements. I am immensely proud of what we’ve achieved as a team across three Universities and with many partners. We turned CSI around with a bold new strategy, have assured CSI’s continued sustainability and indeed scalability and importantly demonstrated impact across sectors.”

“It was always going to take an absolutely incredible purpose-based leadership opportunity to lure me away from that. The new Chief Alliances Officer role at the Paul Ramsay Foundation provides that and more. It has enormous potential to work with others to help break cycles of disadvantage. I’m thrilled to be joining the team.”