Professor Gordana Marčetić was born on 4 March 1963. She is a citizen of Croatia. She graduated from the Faculty of Law, University of Zagreb in 1986. She volunteered for a year as a judicial intern at the Municipal Court in Zagreb and the District Commercial Court in Zagreb. After that, she was employed at the Office for Health and Social Welfare of the City of Zagreb, where she worked as a public servant in the period between 1987 and 1998. She passed the state professional exam at the Ministry of Justice and Administration of the Republic of Croatia in 1988.

In 1997, she enrolled in the Postgraduate scientific study of Legal and Administrative-Political Sciences at the Faculty of Law, University of Zagreb. Since 1998, she has been working at the Department of Administrative Science at the Faculty of Law in Zagreb, starting as a junior assistant, then an assistant, a senior assistant, an assistant professor, an associate professor, a full professor, and, at present, as a full professor with tenure. In 2004, by defending her master’s thesis entitled Public Servants in Post-socialist Transition Countries, she obtained her master’s degree in legal and administrative-political sciences at the Faculty of Law, University of Zagreb. She obtained her doctorate in social sciences in the field of law in 2006 by defending her doctoral dissertation on Human Potentials Management in Public Administration, also at the Faculty of Law in Zagreb. She is registered in the Register of Scientists of the Ministry of Science, Education and Sports of the Republic of Croatia under number 222383 and in the CROSBI database, https://www.bib.irb. hr/view/profile/16558.

She is engaged in scientific research, publishing, teaching and professional work. She teaches a number of courses at the Study of Law, the Study of Social Work, the Professional undergraduate and graduate studies of Public Administration the postgraduate specialist and doctoral studies at the University of Zagreb.  She has published two monographs, seven co-authored books, about fifty scientific papers in books, collections of papers and scientific journals and thirty professional papers. She has presented papers at about sixty international and domestic scientific and professional conferences and participated in seventeen scientific and research projects in the field of public administration, thirteen of which were international.

She has held many professional positions. From 2002 to 2011, she was the secretary of the Postgraduate specialist and doctoral studies of Public Law and Public Administration at the Faculty of Law in Zagreb, and, from 2003 to 2006, a member of the State Examination Commission for Civil Servants at the Ministry of Administration. From 2010 until today, she has been a member of numerous experts working groups for the preparation of regulations and strategies in the field of civil service legislation, corruption prevention and development of public administration at the same Ministry. In the period between 2007 and 2011, she was the head of the Professional study of Public Administration at the Polytechnic of Social Sciences in Zagreb. In the academic year 2010/11, she held the position of the head of the Department of Administrative Science at the Faculty of Law in Zagreb, and was appointed to the same position for academic years 2021 to 2023. She was the first president of the Ethics Committee for Civil Servants of the Republic of Croatia from its establishment in 2009 until 2015. In 2012, she was a member of the Governing Council of the Academy of Local Democracy. From 2015 to 2019, she was the president of the Expert Council of the State School for Public Administration, and, from 2016 to 2018, the head of the Postgraduate specialist study of Public Law and Public Administration at the Faculty of Law in Zagreb. She has been the deputy president of the Council for the Implementation of the Code of Conduct of State Officials in Executive Authorities from 2023.

From 2005 to 2011, she was a member of the editorial board of the scientific journal Croatian Public Administration, and, from 2011 to 2017, a member of the editorial board of the Zagreb Legal Review. From 2006 to 2015, she was a member of the Secretariat of the Institute for Public Administration, and since 2015 she has been the deputy president of the Institute. Since 2014, she has been the leader of theoretical debates on public administration at the Institute for Public Administration. She is a member of the Croatian Academy of Legal Sciences (since 2009), the Croatian-Canadian Academic Society (since 2010), the professional network of the UNDP Regional Centre for Public Administration Reform – RCPAR (since 2009), and from 2014 to 2015, a member of the panel for evaluation of project proposals of the UIP of the Croatian Science Foundation. She is a member of the Scientific Council for State Administration, Judiciary and the Rule of Law of the Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts (since 2017) and the Council of the Partnership for Open Government initiative (since 2017). Since 2023, she has been the President of the Ethics Committee of the Zagreb University Faculty of Law.