David Kalisch was previously the Australian Statistician and Agency Head of the Australian Bureau of Statistics from December 2014-19. During this time, he transformed the operations of the ABS, pursued improvements to its labour market, economic and population data, improved its core statistical systems, delivered quality data from the 2016 Census, successfully delivered the 2017 same sex marriage survey, and improved access to its national data resource within a challenging resource environment.

This followed four years as CEO of the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare and an appointment as Commissioner at the Productivity Commission. He had Senior Executive experience across Social Services, Health and Prime Minister and Cabinet from 1991, two appointments to the OECD in Paris, and was Chief of Staff to a Commonwealth Government Cabinet Minister.

He has experience with organisational leadership and transformation, data governance and data use, labour market analysis, welfare to work strategies, social welfare and health policy.

More recently, he has been providing advisory services around data governance and has several non-Executive positions. He is Chair of the ACT Electoral Commission, member of Board of the Saudi Government General Authority for Statistics, and Board member of LLL Australia.

David holds a Bachelor of Economics (Honours) from the University of Adelaide. He is a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences in Australia and a Fellow of the Australian Institute of Company Directors.