Kim McKay

Kim Coral McKay AO (born 1959) is an Australian environmentalist, author, entrepreneur and international marketing and communications consultant. Since April 2014 she has been the CEO and Executive Director of the Australian Museum, the first woman to hold the position.[1]

She co-founded the Clean Up Australia organisation and the Clean Up The World campaign,[2] a project held in conjunction with the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and which operates in over 100 countries. She co-created The Genographic Project for National Geographic which traces humankind’s genetic history over the past 60,000 years, and is the author of five books.[3]

Early life

McKay was born in Sydney to Francis Gordon and Coral McKay. She was educated at Mackellar Girls’ High School and attended the University of Technology, Sydney (UTS) where she graduated with a BA Communications degree majoring in journalism, public relations and sociology in 1981.

Career

Her career has focused on adventure pursuits and the environment. She was a project manager on all four BOC Challenge solo around the world yacht races in the 1980s and 90s, a media representative on the APSA World Pro Surfing tour in the 1980s, executive director of Discovery Channel Eco-Challenge in Australia, Morocco and Argentina in the late 1990s, and part of National Geographic research and filming expeditions to Peru, Egypt and India.

In 1989, after helping stage the historic Clean Up Sydney Harbour Day where 40,000 people turned out, McKay co-founded Clean Up[4] with solo yachtsman Ian Kiernan. She served as Deputy Chairwoman from 1989 to 2009. Clean Up Australia is one of the largest community environmental projects in Australia annually attracting more than half a million volunteers.

In 1992 she co-founded Clean Up the World, securing partnership with the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) and international corporate support. The program operates in over 100 countries with 30 million participants annually. McKay told ABC radio that ‘The belief that everyone can make a difference is a driving theme behind my actions’.[5]

In 2004 McKay returned to Australia after almost seven years working in the United States in cable television for two non-fiction channels, Discovery Channel and National Geographic Channels International (NGCI). She joined NGCI as Senior Vice President, Marketing and Communications in June 2000.

McKay co-created The Genographic Project[6] with population geneticist Dr Spencer Wells for National Geographic and secured global corporate support from IBM. One of the largest and wide-ranging projects in National Geographic’s 120-year history, the five year+ global study traces humankind’s migratory history during the past 60,000 years and involves the general public through the purchase of a DNA cheek-swab test kit to identify an individual’s ancestry. More than 360,000 test kits have been sold, raising millions of dollars for the Genographic Project’s Legacy Fund to benefit cultural preservation and education projects in indigenous communities around the world.

McKay was the founder and former managing director of Momentum2,[7] a Sydney-based social marketing and communications consultancy working on projects for National Geographic Society, Qantas and Harpo Productions, and managed the media and publicity for Oprah Winfrey’s tour of Australia in 2011. [8]

On 19 February 2014, McKay was appointed the 17th director/curator of the Australian Museum, to succeed Mr Frank Howarth who announced his retirement in October 2013.

Since McKay’s appointment to the Director’s role the Museum has seen several changes including free general admission for children being enshrined into government policy,[9] the construction of a new Museum entrance pavilion, Crystal Hall,[10] the establishment of the Australian Museum Centre for Citizen Science[11] and the announcement of the restoration of Australia’s first museum gallery, the iconic Long Gallery.[12]

In 2008 McKay was awarded as an Officer of the Order of Australia AO.

In 2011 McKay was named in the Australian Financial Review’s 100 Women of Influence list, and was included in the book 'The Power of 100...One Hundred Women who have Shaped Australia’.

Academic career

McKay holds a BA Communications from UTS and is an honorary Adjunct Professor at the Macquarie Graduate School of Management.[13]

Publications

She is the co-author with Jenny Bonnin in the ‘True Green’ series published in Australia (ABC Books) and internationally by National Geographic.[14]

True Green Kids won the AAAS/Subaru Book Prize for Best Hands On Science Book in 2009 and was featured in the journal Science Magazine.

Media

McKay is a media commentator on practical environmental action and is a public speaker addressing business and not-for-profit conferences as well as schools and community groups. She has presented a series of on-camera ‘True Green Tips’ for Sky News in Australia (part of the weekly Eco Report in 2009), co-authored a weekly ‘True Green’ column for the Sunday Telegraph ‘Body and Soul’ newspaper in 2007 and was named in G Magazine’s Top 20 Australian Eco Heroes list in the November 2009 issue. McKay presented a weekly True Green radio spot for ABC regional radio in NSW. She was the master of ceremonies at the media conference during Oprah's Ultimate Australian Adventure at the Sydney Opera House in December 2010.[15]

Not-for-profit roles

In 2016 McKay was nominated by the MacArthur Foundation to be part of an international judging panel for a new US $100 million grant, awarded to an individual or organisation who devises a solution to a critical problem affecting people, places or the planet. McKay is the only person representing the Australasia region on the panel.

In the past she served for 20 years on the Clean Up Australia and Clean Up the World boards as Deputy Chairwoman, as Chair and on the Editorial Advisory Committee for CSIRO’s ECOS Magazine (Australia’s oldest environmental publication; was a steering committee member of the National Business Leader’s Forum on Sustainable Development, a board member of the Center for Australian and New Zealand Studies at Georgetown University, Washington, DC, and a communications advisory committee member of the National Breast Cancer Foundation. She was a member of the Community Relations Committee for the Sydney 2000 Olympic Bid, voluntarily helped coordinate the Million Mom March in Washington DC in 2000, and was one of the co-founders of the Short-handed Sailing Association of Australia. In January 2008 she traveled to Antarctica as part of the Expedition Team, lecturing on board the Australian-based cruise ship ORION.

Awards and honors

References

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