Professor Heather Burrow

Biography

Heather Burrow is a successful senior executive with a national and international profile earned over a 40-year career governing, managing, leading and undertaking innovative and globally-relevant beef research programs that demonstrably value-added the agricultural industries where the research was done. A quantitative geneticist and business professional by training, she is a highly motivated and innovative manager with extensive experience leading multidisciplinary, multi-organisational programs and a research initiator of projects that have delivered improvement of beef cattle across many countries. She is also an effective developer and advocate of new approaches that achieve measurable industry impact from use of new technologies delivered as an outcome of research in developed and developing countries.

Heather is currently employed as a Professorial Research Fellow at the University of New England's Business School and School of Environmental and Rural Science, undertaking ACIAR-funded research-for-development projects in South Africa and Indonesia. She is also a Member of the Independent Steering Committee of the CGIAR Livestock CRP and Chair or Member of three International Advisory Boards focused on livestock research in developed and developing countries. She is probably best recognised for her leadership of the Beef CRC, Australia’s largest integrated beef research program comprising research and industry partner organisations throughout Australia, New Zealand, USA, Canada, Korea, UK, France, Brazil and South Africa (http://www.beefcrc.com/). Since the very successful completion of the Beef CRC contract in 2012 and the wind-up of Beef CRC Ltd in 2014, Heather has undertaken a number of part-time contracts with the University of New England, including Director of Research Partnerships and Innovation at the Institute for Rural Futures and leader of the two major ACIAR- and DFAT-funded projects in South Africa and Indonesia.