The Government Employees Superannuation Board of Western Australia, known as GESB, has appointed Joann Wilkie as chief executive officer, effective 12 August 2026. The appointment, announced on 10 August 2026, takes the state's Under Treasurer into the top job at a fund that managed more than 46 billion Australian dollars as at 31 December 2025. Wilkie arrives from the Western Australian public sector rather than from the funds management industry.
Wilkie takes over from Paul Taylor, who had been interim chief executive since March 2026 and who now returns to his role as chief investment officer, leaving the fund's investment leadership unchanged through the handover. Chair Jo Gaines said: "Joann is an accomplished and respected public sector leader whose experience in governance, finance and organisational leadership will be a great asset to GESB." In the Western Australian public sector, Michael Court was appointed acting Under Treasurer in Wilkie's place.
Wilkie joined from the Western Australian public sector, where she had served as Under Treasurer of the Department of Treasury and Finance from 4 August 2025 and as chair of the Western Australian Treasury Corporation. She was the first female Under Treasurer in Western Australia. Before that she was deputy secretary of the Economic Strategy and Productivity Group at NSW Treasury from February 2019 to 2025, and she held senior federal roles, including at the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet and the Commonwealth Department of Finance, as well as more than a decade at the Commonwealth Treasury. She was awarded the Public Service Medal in the 2026 Australia Day Honours for outstanding public service to fiscal management in New South Wales, particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic. She holds a Bachelor of Economics with honours from the University of Sydney, a Master of Cultural Policy from the Graduate Institute of Policy Studies in Tokyo and a Master of Public Policy from the Australian National University.
GESB provides superannuation to Western Australian public sector employees and is overseen by a board chaired by Gaines, with Taylor as chief investment officer. Its assets stood above 46 billion Australian dollars at the end of December 2025. The fund had been without a permanent chief executive since March 2026, a period of about five months during which the chief investment officer held both roles.
The choice of a career public servant rather than an investment executive points, on the available evidence, to a board weighing governance, regulatory and stakeholder demands as heavily as portfolio returns. That reading is an inference from the appointment rather than a statement by the fund. Wilkie spent more than a decade at the Commonwealth Treasury and led a state treasury, so she arrives with direct experience of the fiscal and policy environment in which a public sector scheme operates, although she has not previously run a superannuation fund. The retention of Taylor as chief investment officer can be read as a deliberate separation of the two skill sets, leaving portfolio decisions with a specialist while the chief executive concentrates on organisational leadership.
