HALL OF FAME

Ms Kaitlyn Swain

2021 Inductee

Student 2004 - 2008

Ms Kaitlyn Swain attended Ipswich Girls’ Grammar School as a day girl from 2004 to 2008. She was a School Prefect and received the Helen Haenke Prize for Third in Year 12.

Ms Swain graduated from the University of Queensland with a first-class honours degree in Business Management (International Business) and a Bachelor of Arts (International Relations and Japanese). She was awarded the University Medal in 2014.

In 2015, Ms Swan joined the Department of the Prime Minister & Cabinet as a graduate. She provided advice to the Prime Minister on constitutional recognition of Indigenous Australians and Australia’s foreign policy in the Pacific region.

After moving to the Department of Employment in 2016, Ms Swain soon took up a secondment to the United Nations’ International Lour Organization (ILO) in Bangkok. She worked for the ILO’s flagship aid program, with a focus on eliminating modern slavery, improving labour standards and addressing gender equality issues in garment factories across the developing world.

Ms Swain returned to Australia and joined the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) in 2018. She managed aid programs aimed at strengthening developing countries’ economies, and designed an aid program to support countries across the Indo-Pacific to build their e-commerce and digital trade sectors. Ms Swain formally announced this program at the United Nations’ E-commerce Week conference in Geneva.

In 2020, Ms Swain was seconded to the Commonwealth Treasury’s Coronavirus Economic Recovery Taskforce to work on reopening Australia’s economy, building economic resilience and the 2020 Budge. She now works on multilateral trade policy and China trade issues for DFAT in Canberra.