Elizabeth Anne Reid AO, FASSA, (born 3 July 1942) is an Australian development practitioner, feminist and academic with a distinguished career in and significant contribution to national and international public service. She founded, established and worked with a number of pioneering and specialised United Nations institutions, government agencies and non-governmental organisations. Reid was appointed the world's first advisor on women's affairs to a head of government by the Australian Labor Government of Gough Whitlam in 1973. Early life and education Reid was born in Taree, New South Wales. At 19 she began a Statistics Cadet and became a Program Officer for the Australian Bureau of Statistics and from 1964 to 1966 she was a computer programmer and training officer. She went on to complete a Bachelor of Arts with First Class Honours at the Australian National University in 1965. Subsequently she was awarded a Commonwealth Travelling Scholarship and completed a Bachelor of Philosophy at Somerville College of the University of Oxford in 1970. She returned to Australia and worked as a Senior Tutor in the Department of Philosophy at the Australian National University from 1970 to 1973. During 1976 Reid was a Fellow at the Institute of Politics and the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. Professional career Reid was the Australian Representative to the United Nations Forum on the Role of Women in Population and Development, held in New York in February 1974. She has performed many roles in the areas of international development and women's rights for the United Nations and other bodies including Director and Policy Adviser of the United Nations Development Program from 1989 to 1998. She was the Leader of the Australian Delegation to the World Conference of the International Women's Year in Mexico City in 1975. She has 30 years of professional development experience in Asia, Africa, the Pacific, the Middle East, the Caribbean, Central America, Eastern Europe and the Commonwealth of Independent States. Reid has had a long career with the United Nations, including milestones such as Founding Director of the United Nations Development Programme HIV and Development Program in New York from 1992 to 1997), Director of the United Nations Development Programme Division for Women in Development from 1989 to 1991 and Founding Director of the United Nations Asian and Pacific Centre for Women and Development in Tehran, Iran from 1977 to 1979. She is a visiting fellow at