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Risk and compliance has become one of the most consequential functions in Australian business. Boards scrutinise it. Regulators demand more from it. And the women leading it are shaping how Australia's biggest organisations govern themselves, manage exposure, and respond when things go wrong. Across banking, insurance, energy, and the public sector, Australian women in risk and compliance are doing work that sits at the centre of how companies survive.
Why this field deserves more attention
Risk and compliance used to be treated as back-office housekeeping. That changed after a run of high-profile regulatory failures, the 2019 Banking Royal Commission, and a sustained period of APRA and ASIC enforcement activity. The chief risk officer now sits close to the board. Compliance leaders brief directors directly. The function has power it didn't have ten years ago, and the women who built careers in it before that power arrived are now among the most experienced operators in the country.
This list covers chief risk officers, heads of compliance, regulatory affairs directors, and enterprise risk leads across Australian organisations. It is not exhaustive. It focuses on leaders whose roles carry genuine institutional weight.
The leaders
Zoe Fielding
Zoe Fielding leads group risk at one of Australia's major regional banks, overseeing credit, operational, and market risk frameworks across a multi-billion-dollar balance sheet. Fielding built her risk career across three institutions before stepping into a group-level role, and she has been a consistent voice on how smaller ADIs can meet APRA's heightened expectations without the resourcing of the big four.
Philippa Clarke
Philippa Clarke heads compliance at a major ASX-listed insurer, overseeing a team responsible for regulatory reporting, breach management, and conduct obligations across multiple product lines. Clarke was among the first compliance leaders to publicly advocate for embedding conduct risk metrics into frontline performance frameworks, not just into audit cycles.
Renae Lattimore
Renae Lattimore runs enterprise risk at one of Australia's largest superannuation funds, a role that spans investment risk, operational resilience, and member outcome obligations under the YFYS performance test framework. Her team sits directly in the line of sight of APRA, and Lattimore has navigated two regulatory reviews without a material finding. That track record is rare.
Sarah Kendall
Sarah Kendall leads regulatory affairs at a major Australian energy company, managing a compliance function that spans the National Energy Market, AEMO obligations, and state-level licensing requirements across three jurisdictions. The energy transition has added complexity to that job at pace, and Kendall has grown her team significantly over the past three years to keep ahead of incoming rules around storage, virtual power plants, and grid connection.
Vivienne Tran
Vivienne Tran is the chief risk officer of a mid-tier Australian bank, a role she stepped into after a decade in risk consulting. Tran has been public about the under-representation of women in CRO roles across the Australian financial system and has mentored a cohort of risk analysts through a structured career program she designed internally. Her focus is model risk and stress-testing methodology.
Louise Argent
Louise Argent leads the conduct and compliance function at a major Australian wealth management business. Her role covers financial advice obligations, design and distribution requirements, and the ongoing implementation of reforms that came out of the Royal Commission. Argent has written publicly on the gap between regulatory intent and operational reality in product governance, and that work has been cited in industry submissions.
Deborah Soo
Deborah Soo runs legal, risk, and compliance as a combined function at a listed Australian technology company, a structure that reflects how tightly those disciplines overlap in a regulated data environment. Soo's team manages obligations under the Privacy Act, the Security of Critical Infrastructure Act, and the company's own international compliance commitments across five markets.
Christine Pham
Christine Pham leads financial crime compliance at a major Australian bank, overseeing AML/CTF obligations, sanctions screening, and correspondent banking risk. Financial crime compliance has grown from a niche specialisation into a core banking function over the past decade, and Pham has been inside that growth the entire time. She now leads a team of more than 60 people.
Natalie Farrugia
Natalie Farrugia is the head of risk and assurance at a large Australian health insurer, covering everything from claims integrity to cyber risk and operational resilience. The health insurance sector has faced sustained regulatory pressure since APRA extended its prudential supervision of private health insurers, and Farrugia has been managing that pressure from the inside.
Amanda Woo
Amanda Woo leads enterprise risk management at a major Australian infrastructure asset manager, a role that spans climate risk, counterparty risk, and regulatory compliance across a portfolio of long-dated assets. Infrastructure investing attracts particular scrutiny from institutional investors on risk governance, and Woo's function sits directly in front of that scrutiny. She presents to the board risk committee quarterly.
What these careers have in common
Several patterns emerge across this group. Most built deep technical expertise before moving into leadership: credit risk modelling, regulatory interpretation, legal analysis. Few came from traditional management pathways. Risk and compliance rewards people who understand the machinery of regulation, not just the org chart around it.
There's also a generational shift happening. Women who entered risk functions in the early 2000s, when the work was largely advisory and low-profile, are now running the functions that boards treat as strategically critical. That shift in institutional status happened around them, not because of a planned career strategy. Timing mattered. So did staying.
The intersection of risk leadership and board governance is worth watching closely. As noted in coverage of women on ASX-listed boards, the pipeline of women into director roles increasingly runs through risk and compliance functions, not just finance and law. The CRO seat has become a credible pathway to the boardroom in a way it wasn't a decade ago.
For readers interested in the broader financial leadership picture, the Australian women in insurance list covers executives whose work overlaps heavily with risk governance, particularly in underwriting and actuarial leadership where risk frameworks are built from the ground up.
A note on the list
This list focuses on leaders in roles that carry direct accountability for risk and compliance outcomes, not advisory or consulting roles. Where individuals hold combined titles (chief risk and compliance officer, head of legal and risk), they are included where the risk and compliance component is substantive. All individuals named here hold or have recently held these roles at Australian organisations. No one on this list paid to be included. No one was told they would be included.
The field is larger than any single list can represent. If you know of a leader whose work belongs here, the nomination process is open.