Professor Piccoli served as a Member of NSW Parliament for 19 years and as the NSW Minister for Education for 6 years from 2011 until 2017. He has more than 20 years’ experience in business and government where he forged a reputation as a progressive public policy thinker and advocate. As Education Minister, he managed a government agency with an annual budget of more than A$13 billion with operational responsibility for 100,000 staff, 1.2 million students in 2,200 government schools and regulatory responsibility for 900 non-government schools across NSW, and 130 TAFE campuses. During his time as Minister, Professor Piccoli also legislated significant university governance reforms in partnership with the university sector in NSW. Professor Piccoli is a Director of the Bell Shakespeare Company and was the Founding Director of the Gonski Institute for Education at the University of New South Wales. In 2017 he was made a Fellow of the Australian Council for Educational Leaders. He is a Professor of Practice, the University of New South Wales (2018), and completed a Bachelor of Economics and a Bachelor of Laws at the Australian National University in 1993.