Empowering Women in Energy: From Classroom to Career - The Power of Diversity in Clean Energy (Transcript)

Empowering Women in Energy: from Classroom to Career explores the crucial role of STEM education for girls in shaping a workforce ready to lead the energy transition, highlighting the importance of early STEM engagement for girls and the diverse opportunities it creates for future leaders in clean energy.

UNSW Digital Grid Futures Institute is delighted to be able to offer recordings of the SOLD OUT event that was held in Sydney in June 2024. It is offered in four parts, reflecting the agenda of the in-person event hosted by EY.

The following transcript is for the third segment of the event: The Power of Diversity in Clean Energy.

Transcript

Sharon Swift:

So my name is Sharon. I run the Digital Grid Futures Institute together with Professor John Fletcher and a colleague of mine, Mel, who selfishly is on leave at the moment having her second wedding in Ireland.

But yeah, I'm glad that we're actually videoing this event, very last minute plans, so I'm hoping that we can amplify and share a lot more of this discussion with more people who couldn't make it today.

So I'm particularly passionate about the real horizon and hairy problems that we're gonna be facing, regarding the energy transition. And I think that's where I come in. I have some crazy ideas sometimes, but I'm just thinking, well if money was no object and if we really need to think 20, 30 years into the future, what do we need to be doing now?

So that's my role at the Institute and workforce is obviously one of the big hairy issues. The other issue that's externally but internally as well is how do we future proof our research talent pipeline and how do we make the education offering as a university fit for purpose as well?

So I'm really interested in all of that nexus. So yeah, so this is the first time we've socialised this work. It's something that we've been talking about for a while and I'm just glad that we've managed to get Anna-Grace in from San Francisco, and tied in with, when she's in town, so it's great to have her here.

So I just wanted to chat to you ladies.

So we've got Victoria from the AEMC. We've got Lynn who is a partner in assurance at EY, and we've got Naomi who runs the Net Zero partnerships at Ausgrid.

So I'm just gonna ask individually each of them what their background was and how they found themselves in this sector, 'cause I think we've got an accountant, two accountants and a lawyer? No, an accountant an economist and a lawyer. There we are.

So yeah, maybe we'll start with you Victoria.

Victoria Mollard:

Great. Hi everyone.

So I'm Victoria Mollard. I'm a Executive General Manager of Economics and System Security at the Australian Energy Market Commission. So for those of you who don't know who the AEMC is, we make the energy rules and provide policy advice to governments on both the electricity and the gas sectors.

So my journey started as an economist, so that's also an area which is typically underrepresented by females. So I think we're about 30% of economists in Australia female at the moment, but there is obviously, similar to the STEM, lots of work trying to change that. So I started doing my economic study back in Auckland in New Zealand, I'm originally from New Zealand, I don't have an accent so you won't pick that, and I moved across to Australia after I finished university to start working for an economic consultancy firm. And I really enjoyed that – working across a whole different range of areas, topics, projects, but I've been there about three years and I've really developed a lot of, those transferable skills, but I wanted to get into a bit more industry and really become an expert and really understand a bit more about one particular area. And I think energy is such a great topic for that.

It's something that affects every single person here in this room. It enables me to cook my food, it enables people to have surgeries, it enables me to stream my favourite show on Disney or Netflix, and I think it's something that connects with so many people and there's so much technological change and everything that's going on as well.

I was really pleased to see the slides presented at the beginning, 'cause I do think energy's going through one of the biggest transitions since the industrial revolution at the moment, so that really sets the scene.

And that really brought me to the AEMC, which is where I joined as an advisor, one of our entry level positions back in 2012, and I've been very lucky to be there ever since. I now sit on our executive, but have many opportunities to kind of continue to grow, learn more skills and really develop. And I think the kind of challenge of both the energy industry, the technology development, the innovation, the desire from everybody to kind of work towards this great outcome, is really what's kept me interested and kept me invested.

So that’s a little bit about me.

Sharon Swift:

There's also a great mentor, Anna Collyer is the chair of the AEMC and she does a lot of work in this space and that's how we came to find you for this panel today, so thank you for coming.

Lynn, I'd love to hear a bit more about what brought you into energy, and I think you need to share your 10 gigawatt story and the impact that your career has allowed you to have.

Lynn Morrison:

Yeah, thanks Sharon.

Well first of all, I'm Lynn Morrison, partner from EY, in addition to Claire's warm welcome to our office, I also add on my warm welcome as well.

So well I'm an accountant by training, I think today is not about debating whether accountancy is art or science, because we deal with a lot of numbers, I'd like to think I'm a STEM person too.

So I graduated and I started accounting and finance and I just naturally move in to the big four, you're talking about 25 years ago. It is a dream job for a lot of accountant candidates, right, graduating from uni. But really how I started move into the energy sector is really about 15 years ago.

When you're a senior audit manager, you start to network, start to think about which industry sector you're gonna specialise. And then in one of the networking event I actually met, now it's a top leading wind turbine global suppliers, I met this person take a team of two, himself plus his assistant, to looking at Australia as a market to invest and to explore. And then, so you can imagine engineer by training in the background versus accountant in a networking event, what you talk about.

So that really sparked my interest of how this wind data actually translate into electricity, and I have to be honest, I was very nerdy. I went home that day, I talked about how great I am as auditor and he talked about how great their wind turbine solution is. But when home I started video searching about how this wind translate electricity and that's my journey of energy started.

So since then, I think I decided to say this is something I really resonated with because it actually does make positive impact to the environment and climate. And I start to put myself onto those opportunities when the firm presents opportunity to me, no matter how small the client is, I want to work with them 'cause I want to learn, I want to grow, and I wonder where the sector gonna take us.

And that proved to be a, I'd like to call it a very success story because I said to Sharon this morning that because I'm gonna speak at this event, actually did a bit of a summary of over the time, over the last 15 years, how many renewable energy generation clients that I have worked with in the contribution to the NEM. So I think the 2024, if you look at the RSP chart, you're talking about overall the electricity generation in Australia is probably around 85 gigawatts, roughly, thereabouts. And about 40% of that is a renewable energy. You're talking about rooftop solar, solar panels, utility scale and wind turbines, as well as some hydro. And I realized over my time of career, I have nearly 10 gigawatts of clients actually generating their electricity. So I was like, wow, a big high five to myself.

So that's really me where I'm at. So I won't talk too much about my, special areas of training, which is really financial accountancy and assurance, but really what I enjoy most is to see the energy transition and also the industry evolve from 15 years ago.

People still debating, is climate change real? To now where everyone knows that's the imperative we have to do it, and we need to transition ourself into a net zero future.

Sharon Swift:

Great.

And you mentioned the NEM, for anyone who doesn't work in the sector, it's the National Electricity Market, yep.

So Naomi, I'd love to chat to you a little bit about Ausgrid, 'cause obviously Ausgrid, you're really at the sort of coalface of delivering electricity to customers and they obviously have a relationship directly with a retailer.

But what sort of, well, what's the journey that took you to where you are, and what does net zero mean in the context of Ausgrid, which is really lots of poles and wires and smart meters and so on?

Naomi Wynn:

Absolutely.

So my net zero and energy journey really started more than 20 years ago. This was at a dinner table conversation, when I was in middle school. So very apt to the previous panel's discussion about that influence at the right time. Someone new had just taken over the South Australian Museum, they'd moved down from Sydney, didn't really know anyone in Adelaide, and my dad invited them over for dinner. He just liked to, show people around the town, very passionate about the state, total nerd as well. So he'd written a book that he was very passionate about. So invited him over, and just chatting around the dinner table. This guy was writing a book on climate change. It was gonna be the book at the, that people would pick up at the airport as our airport read to make climate change accessible.

That person was Tim Flannery, and he actually ended up dedicating the book to my sister and I and my sister went into her first year of uni doing all his footnote references and that sort of thing.

So it made me really understand that climate change was actually really complicated, really interesting, and it was gonna be something that would be a problem for the duration of my lifetime and for lifetimes beyond it.

So, but at the same time there wasn't really any careers for climate change. You couldn't be a climate lawyer, you couldn't be, a climate engineer on that sort of thing. It just simply did not exist. It was still too nascent a point in time.

And so I knew I wasn't being able going to go into STEM, as the way it sort of defined a science, tech, engineering and maths, even though I loved those subjects. I have dyscalculus so it means it's like dyslexia but for numbers and nobody really knew about it back then. So only I really knew about it. So I knew, okay, well I could do hard maths, and I could do it and make it really hard for myself and get really freaked out. Or I'll just do the easy maths and do the exam twice and mark my own homework in the entire exam, and then get the highest and then win the grade award for that level as a result. So I just gamed it myself, because I just knew I wasn't gonna be able to excel at a higher level in the same way. And that meant I went into law.

And going into law, again, I knew I didn't really wanna be a lawyer, but I wanted those legal skills. I could see how those legal skills would really help set me up in a new sector, a sector that was constantly evolving, 'cause it was really that point in time where lawyers were going to do a law degree but then going off to do something else completely. They weren't just staying and working as a lawyer.

And so that meant instead of going into a big law firm, I picked a dedicated boutique law firm, that just looked at environmental planning, water, energy law, because that was where sort of climate issues will get really moving forward, it meant they did internships in the state while I was at uni, working on some of the first emissions cases as well, which was really exciting.

But I knew the goal was get into policy, get into ideally domestic, then international. And I just, I did that, I thought it would be a 10-year plan but ended up happening in a few years. So it meant working for federal government and energy, getting seconded to APEC in Tokyo, to the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation, and their energy and research center and really getting an amazing experience of meeting people from around the world who all have different backgrounds, and working with our different governments or different tertiary institutions.

When that secondment was over, I was fortunate enough to come back to New South Wales government, but I knew still energy was where my passion was and would be energy and resources. And so was fortunate enough to go from program to policy area, issue to issue for a number of times and after I'd been in government longer than I planned, I looked over to Ausgrid and Ausgrid had some great opportunities for me.

So over at Ausgrid we really are at that forefront in terms of, trying to bring up a huge workforce of men and women into the workplace. We've got lots of initiatives trying to improve how we can reach out to high schools, universities, how we our apprenticeship programs to try and bring it up to gender parity. And it's not easy, it's really challenging, but it's also really exciting because the reason why I'm in this industry is I'm learning stuff that's new every single day, I didn't wanna be doing the same thing day in, day out, and energy's a career that's afforded me to work in everything from, consumer hardships through to smart meters through to EV, right now it's EV charging infrastructure through to energy security, you name it, it's so broad even if it just does read as one sector.

Sharon Swift:

Amazing. Thank you.

And yeah, speaking of lawyers, it was the Fin Review article that was up just for a few seconds earlier in John's talk where at least, or up to half of the probations and recruited lawyers into the sector were related to the energy sector. So, and I think again when we talk about pipeline, it was really about, just future proofing, their offering and making sure that they've got the skills available. So thank you for that.

I guess I wanted to chat to you, again, being in a male dominated industry, probably less so, Lynn, but in Ausgrid and certainly within the economics and policy space, what's your experience within that sector and with the adjacent people that you work with, and have you seen any changes in the time that you've been within your respective organisations?

Victoria, maybe I'll start with you.

Victoria Mollard:

Yeah, thank you.

So I think in some ways the AEMC have been pretty lucky there. We're very proud to say that we've had 50% representation at our commission executive and even more importantly at that middle manager level, for over 10 years now. And so that really drives that we don't have a gender pay gap because it is pretty well represented all the way down and recognise that many organisations do not have that as a privilege.

But I've certainly kind of seen over the past 10 years there's been many instances. We do a lot of consultation with industry for example. There's been lots of times where I've been the only female in the room in those meetings. I have definitely seen areal shift over that time. Not only, getting more females and women in there but also really different perspectives. And I think that's something that we really lean into at the AEMC that given the transition underway, in order to solve all of these really complicated problems, we really wanna bring diversity and inclusion.

So, as you mentioned Anna Collier, our chair is one of the three Australian Energy Equality ambassadors and she has this great quote that she always says that, "More inclusive teams are gonna come up with 10 times more innovative solutions". And so that's something that we've really lent into and I've seen a lot of change as well, across both our organisation and the sector over the past 10 years.

We actually have rolled out a whole training program to our executive leadership and then now down to the policy level looking at how do you create and embrace different types of cognitive diversity, how do you create psychological safety, how do you share those experiences to bring people together and create those more innovative solutions? So I've definitely seen a shift in that space and that's something that we're really focused on and cognisant at the AEMC.

Sharon Swift:

I can relate to that working in academia, and working with different cognitive styles. So, yes. Not looking at anyone in particular. Engineers.

Perhaps we'll come quickly to you Naomi, and then Lynn, I'd love for you to consider maybe, your ecosystem and your network of clients and the representation within those, not just within the EY context.

So, Naomi.

Naomi Wynn:

Look, in my personal experience, it does ebb and flow. You take me to when I was working in Japan, and boy was that a real stark contrast what you see in Australia, it really is not just 10 years behind, we're talking 20, 30, 50 years behind the times in terms of what expectations are to support women in the workplace and what's appropriate and all of that sort of thing.

Different pockets of my career has seen a greater proportion of women. So when I was working more on the social energy consumer side of things, there were definitely a higher proportion of women, but then when I work on more sort of STEM style technical engineering side, then chances are, I will be the only woman in the room. And I think that's where it's about creating that muscle memory for young women and removing any potential fears they have about being the only woman, because now I don't even think about it, I don't even observe it, it's more funny to me and we all commented on it amongst my female colleagues when it is just a meeting of all women.

So it's just that muscle memory that you have to just start doing and the more you do it, you really stop thinking about it. And hopefully over time, no one will have to because it will just be that parity.

So my experience is it really depends on, the exact environment you're in, in a given time. But I would say that the wonderful thing about the people I've worked with, is that they've always been so gracious and generous with their information in the energy sector. So it means that you can ask those dumb questions and there are no dumb questions. And I think that removes a lot of the fear that might happen in other sectors because people really do want to encourage you to get to a solution 'cause we're all just working towards the same outcome and we all just really wanna get to the best solution possible, and it creates a very safe space I've found relative to other sectors.

Sharon Swift:

Amazing.

And I think you touched on this in your experience in your role in, the customer side and the hardship side, the community engagement side and all of those, again, softer skills and all those things that we really don't think about, because we're really, the bottom of the hockey stick if you like, of, the uptick in of this change and transformation that we're going through and no silly questions.

There really is a lot that we still don't know, and we don't know what we don't know. And there's a lot of, a lot of it has been, John and I chatted about this recently, it's been engineering led, so far, market and engineering led, and I think now we're really, butting up against quite a lot of barriers, behavioural barriers, consumer attitude barriers, obviously cost of living is a challenge, so that's providing an extra dimension of a challenge to deployment really.

So, really tackling all of those other aspects, it's like the engineers have got it sorted, it's just all of the other stuff and working with engineers to make sure that it gets out there, successfully and with as minimal disruption as possible, but also equitably as possible. And that's a lot of the work that we're really leaning into now at the institute.

So Lynn, you've probably got a really good representation amongst your client base of organisations either wishing to invest or that are playing within the space. What are your observations in terms of gender, gender norms, gender diversity attitudes?

Lynn Morrison:

I probably would say on the two panellists’ comments, I think one of the DEI initiative is certainly one of the things that we drive really hard at EY, the fact Claire's here actually chairing that is showing the support.

In terms of the clients in the space, I have to say because of the work of the champion change and all the initiative that's driving the market, the awareness certainly have over the last, at least for my 15 years of observation, has really increased a lot, and it's often coming to the conversations with the client.

I would just give two observations in my involvement in the industry. One is the industry body Clean Energy Council, they often host a industry event, Clean Energy Summit in July every year. And then if I look back of five, six years ago, that at the participation or attendees, it was very male dominant, I have to say, the females are certainly a minority, but I think in the recent years you can see that percentage of participation is increasing and then they're very consciously pushing on the gender diversity agenda as well.

One initiative is they have women in renewables, leaders pledge and I was one of those sign up for that. Second is any panel discussions they said that we have to have female representative in this topical area. It's really driving and spotlighting and showcasing the female leadership in this sector. But also we need to sign up in the kind of the conduct of how do we, as a leader ourselves, be very inclusive in our day to day? So I think as a result of all those initiatives, it's actually driving change and increasing the awareness for a lot of energy companies play in the sector.

The other observation is probably extend beyond the gender to probably broader diversity. I think it's not just about female leadership, it's about actually everyone in it. So not feeling making the other significant half of male in the community excluded I think it's as equally important, but also as a country we are so multicultural and how do we get that culture elements into the industry transition? That's also very important, 'cause if I look at our energy system, we actually have the supply chain that's very connected with overseas, and there might be engineers working on the assets or generating as a critical infrastructure from really different cultures and how do we engage them for the benefit of our nation? That's just equally important.

So a real example I could give is one of my team members, probably not most fluent English speaker, and then she's multilingual and then we had a site visits to a wind farm generation. But the way she could communicate in her language as a comfortable with the engineer, who is actually supervising the site, that was just amazing to see, and the impact she make as a junior team member to our clients, that to me is just a power of that diversity from different background and draw on your strengths.

So I really wanna just sort of add on to that beyond the gender, there is diversity of sorts of different culture diversity, and that's all the initiative part of our DEI strategy here at EY.

Sharon Swift:

And sadly we're running outta time, but we've got five minutes for questions.

But I just wanna close in on that diversity piece and I think we're running multiple races here, obviously we've got the cultural race, we've got the diversity race, but we've also got the race of understanding, the techno and economic and political and the entire ecosystem and the fact that the diversity of views once we get, community perspectives once we get, external views on, barriers that consumers will face, the cost pressures that are on at the moment. And I think by its very nature what we're going through at the moment is bringing along with it a whole diverse set of voices that are probably not been involved in energy before, but it is gonna be omnipresent.

So yeah, it's exciting to see but it's scary how fast it's happening.

We've got a time for a couple of questions where we've got five minutes left, so hands up for anyone who would like to ask a question.

Oh, yep.

Audience member 1:

Hi guys. I am from Parent Skills Organisation, a jobs and skills council set up by federal government to look into training for energy, gas and renewables. And I think the talk earlier about, getting to kids younger and in schools is great one, but one of the things we've just finished a road show where we've gone around the country speaking to people in the industry and they're saying that if they do entice women to take on these apprenticeships, a lot of them are dropping out in year one.

So I wanted to ask your opinions about the things that employers are doing or should be doing to support women who are entering into a classroom mostly at 16 or 18 years old into a room full of smelly boys, how are you gonna support them to actually get through the four years and get their qualification?

Sharon Swift:

Yeah, I think Annika's had to leave but she touched on that respect, and within the workplaces that I know is a major pillar of theirs.

But sorry, I'll hand over to you. Naomi, you probably work with a lot of apprentices in your business.

Naomi Wynn:

Yeah and we are continually trying to increase the number of female apprentices in our workforce.

Look, it's not easy, I think the dropout rate, female, male is high regardless, but obviously for female there are just so many more challenges at play that need to be addressed.

So some of the things Ausgrid does is things like mentorship programs, really giving you that buddy relationship. We've got a women's group as well that really it's just a community to raise any number of issues and some of it's self-driving, some of it's just, something's come up,how do we resolve that?

And then there's really a lot of creating community amongst themselves because the larger of a cohort they have amongst themselves, the more that they feel like, they represent a group in and of itself.

We've also made sure as well as part of our apprenticeship of the year awards, that women are well represented and they always are like it's just because the number's increasing by virtue of that, the final list, is going to be proportion of women as well.

So it's obviously a long, hard journey and the dropout rates are going to continue. But with certain programs like mentoring, support, creating a community for themselves as a little group of sisterhood, that does help.

Sharon Swift:

I think a lot of it's engaging with men and I did note that most of the audience here today are women. So I think we're kind of almost preaching to the converted and I think, how do we, I don't wanna be facetious about it, but I think it's, how do we, get fathers and brothers and uncles and male mentors involved in this?

Sharon Swift: