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Deputy Chief Operating Officer
Ms Mary Burton
Ms Mary Burton became the Australian Research Council’s Deputy Chief Operating Officer on 27 April 2007. She joined the ARC as Director, Program Management in April 2005.
Ms Burton has had a broad and varied career in the public sector, encompassing experience across a range of corporate areas (including in the areas of human resources and financial management, corporate governance, change management, protective security and risk management), as well as in program management and the provision of legal and economic policy advice.
Ms Burton’s career spans a number of public sector organisations. Her early work experience from the mid-1980s to mid 1990s included corporate human resources and financial management roles and acting as Executive Officer to the Chief Executive Officer at CSIRO. She was Manager, Corporate and Government and helped establish the National Office for the Information Economy in 1998/1999, and was Manager of Business Planning and Corporate Governance for the Department of Communications, Information Technology and the Arts from late 1999 to late 2001, with responsibility for the preparation of the Department’s Strategic, Business, Risk Management and Evaluation Plans.
From late 2001 to early 2005, Ms Burton was Director, Mergers and Assets Sales for the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, where she was responsible for providing economic and legal advice to the Commission and investigating mergers and acquisitions that may have had anti-competitive effects on Australian markets. Ms Burton was acknowledged as an expert in media and telecommunications competition issues and handled complex cases involving the agricultural, pharmaceutical and building and construction industries. She was responsible for negotiating some of the most complex court-enforceable undertakings ever entered into by the Commission to address potential contraventions of the Trade Practices Act 1974.
Ms Burton has a Bachelor of Laws (First Class Honours) from the University of Canberra (having been awarded The University Medal) and a Bachelor of Economics (majoring in economics, statistics and pure mathematics) from The Australian National University.
She has been admitted to the ACT Supreme Court as a Barrister and Solicitor and holds a Graduate Diploma in Legal Practice from The Australian National University.
