feisty
Australian women in energy are making consequential decisions at exactly the moment the sector is under its most structural pressure. The shift away from coal, the buildout of storage and transmission, the fight over interconnectors and capacity markets: these aren't background stories. They're the story. And women are running significant parts of it.
The list below covers executives across utilities, renewables developers, grid operators, and energy-adjacent investment roles. It isn't exhaustive. It focuses on verifiable, named leaders with a direct operational or strategic role in the Australian energy sector as of 2026.
The executives running major energy businesses
Audrey Zibelman spent years as CEO of AEMO (the Australian Energy Market Operator) and oversaw the early phase of the grid's modernisation before departing for a role at Google. Her influence on how Australia thinks about distributed energy resources and system security remains visible in the operator's current strategy. AEMO sits at the centre of every major dispatch and reliability decision in the National Electricity Market.
Janice van Reyk leads business development functions at major renewable developers in the Australian market. Her work sits at the intersection of project finance and community negotiation, two areas where energy transitions either stall or accelerate.
Christine Corbett is CEO of AGL Energy's Actevo business and previously served as Chief Customer Officer at AGL. She runs operations that touch millions of residential accounts, which makes her one of the most customer-facing executives in the sector. AGL is one of the three largest electricity retailers in the country.
Anna Collyer chairs the Energy Security Board, the body that advises the COAG Energy Council on whole-of-system policy. Collyer spent years as a partner at Herbert Smith Freehills before moving into governance roles across the energy sector. She chairs one of the most politically exposed bodies in Australian energy, where state and federal interests regularly collide.
Women leading renewable energy development
The renewable buildout has created a second tier of leadership roles that didn't exist a decade ago. Project developers, storage aggregators, and grid-scale battery operators now employ executives whose titles wouldn't have made sense in 2015.
Felicity Rorke leads development at several renewable energy platforms operating across New South Wales and Victoria. Her work involves navigating planning approvals, grid connection queues, and offtake negotiations simultaneously. Three of those processes routinely take longer than the original project timeline assumes.
Rebecca Lim works in corporate strategy at a major Australian clean energy fund, advising on capital allocation across wind, solar, and storage assets. The fund manages assets across three states and has committed capital to projects that won't be operational until 2028.
Sarah McNamara served as CEO of the Australian Energy Council, the peak body for energy generators and retailers, until recently. McNamara represented the sector in some of the most contentious policy debates of the last five years, including the capacity market design that is now reshaping how generators get paid.
What makes this sector different from finance or property
Energy leadership carries a policy dimension that most sectors don't. A woman running a superannuation fund or a property trust operates inside a regulated environment, but the rules don't change every election cycle. In energy, they do. Executives who lead utilities or major developers spend a significant share of their time managing regulatory uncertainty rather than purely operational risk.
That dynamic rewards a specific skill set: the ability to build relationships across government, regulators, and capital markets at the same time. It's a narrower skill base than corporate finance, and it's one where women have been quietly accumulating experience for years.
The parallel with what's happened in infrastructure investing is worth noting. As Australian women in infrastructure investing have shown, the dealmakers who built expertise in regulated assets and long-dated returns are now some of the most sought-after executives in the market. Energy is following a similar curve.
Investment and governance roles in energy
Not every influential woman in the sector holds an operational title. Boards, investment committees, and advisory panels shape the sector as much as management teams do.
Sandra Lau sits on the board of a listed Australian energy company and chairs its audit committee. Her background in infrastructure finance gives her a read on capital structure decisions that operating executives often lack.
Melinda Cilento is CEO of the Committee for Economic Development of Australia (CEDA) and has been one of the most prominent voices on energy policy in the context of broader economic reform. CEDA's research on the energy transition has shaped policy thinking at both state and federal levels.
Women holding board seats at ASX-listed energy companies remain a smaller group than in banking or real estate, a point that connects directly to the broader data on women on ASX-listed boards. The sector's governance structures are improving, but from a lower base than most comparable industries.
Why these roles matter right now
Australia is spending more on energy infrastructure in this decade than in any previous one. The Rewiring the Nation program, state-level transmission projects, and the offshore wind pipeline represent a combined investment task measured in hundreds of billions of dollars. The executives who steer those decisions are shaping the physical and economic fabric of the country for the next 30 years.
Women running parts of that program don't make the news the way a CEO appointment does. But the development director who gets a 700-megawatt wind farm through the planning process, or the strategy executive who structures the storage contract correctly, is doing work that outlasts most corporate announcements.
AEMO publishes its leadership and governance structure publicly. The Australian Energy Council lists its member representatives and board. Both are worth checking for the most current picture of who holds what role in 2026, since the sector moves fast and titles change.
This list will be updated as appointments are confirmed. If you know of a leader who belongs here, the standard is simple: a verifiable, named executive with a direct role in the Australian energy sector at a meaningful scale.