When Ryan Rickard walked into EPEC for the first time, she saw exactly what she’d been looking for. A team of exceptional people, a business with serious ambition, and three founders who meant every word of it. She hasn’t looked back since.
Ryan is one of a growing number of women stepping into senior leadership in the energy sector. She’s worked across Big Four consulting, lived in Canada and Australia, and spent her career learning from some of the most impressive women leaders she’s ever come across. What stuck with her from all of it is simple: take a seat at the table, trust that you belong there, and don’t wait to be invited twice.
At EPEC she’s found a place where that actually holds true. Different perspectives get a real hearing. She doesn’t take that for granted, and it’s a big part of why she feels strongly about creating the same thing for other women coming into engineering and energy, particularly those who haven’t yet figured out how much they have to offer.
The more perspectives you have around the table, the better the outcome. I’ve felt completely welcomed to bring mine and I’m very aware it could have been a different story.
Ryan came to EPEC after a long career advising large organisations from the outside. She was good at it, and she enjoyed it. But somewhere along the way she got tired of recommending and wanted to start building something herself. When she sat across from EPEC’s three founders, she found what she was after. Passionate, a little bit rogue and completely committed to what they were building. She’d seen enough organisations up close to know when something had the right ingredients. This one did.
As General Manager of Engineering, Ryan leads the engineering team that has over 60 engineers in Brisbane & Melbourne. Her first week settled any nerves she might have had about the role. Spending time with the principals and senior leaders across the engineering team, she had a moment she still remembers. The technical quality was already there. It had been built and owned by the team long before she walked in. What they needed from her was something else entirely and knowing that changed how she approached everything that followed.
The engineering expertise is extraordinary. My job is largely about creating the conditions for it to thrive.
Her senior leadership team are people she trusts completely and leans on every day. That frees her up to focus on the things that sit alongside the technical work, the development conversations, the ways of working that could be sharper and the environment that keeps good people engaged and growing. Most of what she does is quiet. A conversation that gets someone unstuck. A process that stops getting in the way. An opportunity to innovate that reaches the right person at the right time. Over a year it adds up to something.
She’ll be the first to tell you she hasn’t always got it right. Early on she had a habit of trusting her own read on a situation and moving. There was a strategy she shaped without properly bringing in the people it would affect most. When it landed badly, she felt it immediately. It’s the kind of thing you only need to learn once, and she’s carried it with her into every room she’s been in since.
Collaborate and surround yourself with people who challenge your assumptions. It doesn’t always feel nice in the moment, but I’d guarantee the end result is better for it.
What success looks like has changed for her too. For most of her career it was personal, momentum, progress, never standing still. Then she had her daughter and moved back to Australia, and the goalposts shifted. The drive is definitely still there. But these days she gets far more out of watching the people around her do something great than from anything she’s achieved herself. She thinks that shift has made her better at the job.
Success used to be about my own progress. Now it’s much more about the progress of the team.
That thinking runs through everything she says about women in the industry too. She’s less interested in describing the problem than in talking about what actually changes it. A pipeline that starts early, getting girls into STEM before they’ve already made up their minds about what’s for them. And then real sponsorship once they arrive in the workforce, leaders actively talking about women’s work in rooms they’re not in, putting them forward for the opportunities that shape careers. She’s had people do that for her. She knows the difference it makes. Her advice to any woman thinking about coming into engineering or energy: know what you bring, stop trying to second-guess it, and back yourself.
Once they’re here, they need people backing them, speaking well of them in rooms they’re not in, putting them forward for the experiences and leadership opportunities they wouldn’t otherwise be considered for.
Underneath all of it is still the kid who dreamed about being the concierge from her favourite film. Polished, well-connected, someone who could make the impossible happen for whoever walked through the door. She laughs when she talks about it now. But honestly, it’s not that far from where she ended up. The people at EPEC are exceptional, the work matters, and every day her job is to make sure they have what they need to do it well. Different door. Same instinct.
What excites me most,” she says, “is that we’ve only just begun.
