Kevin Michael Rudd AC is an Australian diplomat and former politician who served as the 26th prime minister of Australia from 2007 to 2010 and June to September 2013. He held office as the leader of the Labor Party (ALP) and was the member of parliament (MP) the Queensland division of Griffith from 1998 to 2013. Since 2023, Rudd has been the 23rd ambassador of Australia to the United States.

Rudd is of English and Irish descent. His father's great-grandparents were English: Thomas Rudd and Mary Cable. Thomas had been convicted of stealing a bag of sugar, arrived in NSW on board the Earl Cornwallis in 1801. Mary had been sentenced to transportation for stealing a bolt of cloth, arriving in the colony in 1804. His mother's grandparents, Owen Cashin and Hannah Maher, who were both born in Ireland, met and married in Brisbane in 1887.