Liz Hughes
Chief Executive Officer, National Institute of Dramatic Art (NIDA)
Liz is a highly experienced and entrepreneurial senior executive in the creative industries, cultural and education sectors.
As NIDA’s CEO since December 2019, Liz has led NIDA’s strategic positioning, modernisation initiatives, financial sustainability, and ensured NIDA continues to build on its world-renowned creative education while embracing opportunities of disruption.
Liz is a positive transformational leader and change-maker, specialising in collaboration, partnerships, and maximising the value of organisations. She is committed to harnessing the unique qualities of NIDA’s practice-based job-ready education, making it accessible and inclusive for talented individuals, and collaborating with industry to extend the possibilities of the dramatic arts in all its guises across stages, screens, live events, gaming, expanded reality, and beyond.
Previously, Liz held senior executive roles at the Australian Film Television and Radio School (AFTRS), where she transformed the external engagement and partnerships with industry, government, business and community through industry training, a large-scale short course program, raising commercial revenue and overseeing diversity initiatives.
As Artistic Director at Experimenta, Liz led media art biennales and created programs that encouraged artists to push the boundaries of emerging technologies to create interactive artwork that surprised, delighted, and captured the imaginations of audiences. These programs generated record-breaking audience numbers locally and globally and played a pivotal role in the development of some of today’s prominent media artists and influenced organisations.
Liz has held numerous other arts leadership roles including positions in the higher education sector, as part of public programs, in remote Indigenous communities and as a board director. She is also an award-winning filmmaker.
Liz holds an Executive MBA from the University of Technology Sydney, a BA (Film & Television) from Swinburne Film and TV School (now V.C.A Film and TV School), and is a Graduate of the Australian Institute of Company Directors.