Kelsie is an engineering leader, with experience spanning across maintenance, engineering, operations and projects., and is currently Principal Business Improvement Planning at Woodside Energy.
Growing up in NSW, Kelsie Clarke attended a school that was focused on performing arts and didn’t have any family link to engineering. But she was sure a career as an engineer would allow her to make an impact and affect social change and undertaking work experience with a chemical engineer further fuelled the fire.
Kelsie studied civil engineering at the University of Newcastle in NSW and made the bold move to shift across the country to Perth to work for Woodside. The shift wasn’t without its challenges – Kelsie knew nobody in WA and attended networking events at night just to establish social connections – but she found her feet and gained experience in offshore and subsea civil and structural roles, before transferring to Karratha Gas Plant, where she held a range of roles, including being a Maintenance Engineering Team Lead. On her move back to Perth in 2022, Kelsie was a Business Advisor, followed by Business Readiness Lead for the SAP/4HANA ERP project, before moving to her current role.
Along the way, she further broadened her horizons with a secondment through Indigenous organisation Jawun, won the Emerging Talent award (Subsea Energy Australia) in 2016, was a finalist for the Western Australia Young Engineer of the Year Award (Engineers Australia) in 2019 and 2023, and recently won the CME Outstanding Young Woman in Resources Award 2023.
Kelsie is Vice Chair of the Board of Engineers Without Borders Australia, is an alumnae of Homeward Bound, a global leadership program for women in STEM, has acted as a mentor for female engineering students, was a long-term committee member of Woodside’s Gender Equality committee and is a current member and ally of Woodside’s VIBE LGBTIQ+ committee.