Leisa Bacon has spent over 25 years building brands, understanding audiences, and leading some of Australia’s most complex marketing organisations — from Procter & Gamble and Coca-Cola to the ABC and Creative Australia. Today, she’s back where it all began: at QUT, where she completed both her undergraduate and postgraduate degrees in Business, now serving as the University’s Chief Marketing Officer.
Most recently, Leisa spent a decade at the ABC — Australia’s largest creative organisation and its most trusted media brand — culminating in her role as Director of Audiences. She led a division spanning marketing, social strategy, enterprise design, creative, media, audience planning, and data & insights. Her mandate – to build the ABC brand and help Australians discover great Australian content, at scale, across every platform.
Before that, she cut her teeth on some of the world’s most demanding marketing environments — leading major product launches and campaigns for global powerhouses, at Director level, with accountability for results that mattered.
Leisa was ranked #1 CMO in Australia in 2020 and is a Fellow of The Marketing Academy. She holds a degree and master’s in Business, has completed Executive studies in Design Thinking at Stanford and Leading Change at Harvard, and is a self-described brand and customer experience evangelist. Putting the customer at the heart of every decision isn’t a philosophy for her — it’s a practice. Off the clock, she’s a Board member of the National Parks & Wildlife Foundation (the hiker in her insisted), and sits on the Board of physical theatre company Legs on the Wall — because a lifelong love of the arts demands more than applause.
