Kevin Rudd is a former foreign minister and prime minister of Australia. He joined the Department of Foreign Affairs before serving in the Australian embassies in Stockholm and Beijing. He later returned to Queensland to work as private secretary to premier Wayne Goss when state Labor had been in opposition for thirty-two years. He then became chief of staff to the premier before being appointed director general of the Cabinet Office. He was elected to the House of Representatives in 1998 before becoming leader of the Opposition in 2006. Since leaving office in 2013, he has served as a senior fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School and president of the Asia Society Policy Institute in New York. He also serves as Chair of three not-for-profits: the International Peace Institute, Sanitation and Water for All, and the National Apology Foundation. Kevin Rudd joined the Labor Party forty years ago and in 2019 joined Gough Whitlam and Bob Hawke as a national life member of the party.
