Michael Mintrom is Professor of Public Policy at Monash University, where he serves as the inaugural Director of Better Governance and Policy, a whole-of-university initiative to improve the policy impact of academic research. Michael has extensive experience as a policy designer. His two books with Oxford University Press discuss the importance of treating public policies as investments and key elements of contemporary policy analysis. His other books have considered effective policy advocacy, the spread of policy innovations, and the factors that produce enduring, successful public policies. He has served as a policy adviser in New Zealand and as the Monash Chair at the Australia and New Zealand School of Government, where he was Academic Director of the renowned Executive Master of Public Administration degree. He holds a PhD in Political Science from the State University of New York at Stony Brook and an MA in Economics from the University of Canterbury.