The National Health and Medical Research Council of Australia (NHMRC) has provided Australians with medical research funding, health advice and ethical oversight of research for nearly nine decades. Here we see the human face of the organisation, through seventeen accounts from NHMRC CEOs, Chairs of Council, and Chairs of the Research Committee and the Australian Health Ethics Committee, of their leadership times at NHMRC. We read their candid recollections—feelings of pride, concern, isolation, delight, confusion, disappointment, invigoration, and sometimes frustration and dismay— and of their often challenging dealings with government, researchers, and the community.