Rachael Kelly
Principal Adviser
People, Culture & Organisational Strategy
Rachael has spent more than two decades helping organisations figure out how to get from strategy to reality. She advises boards, executive teams, and people and culture functions on how to turn high-level direction into work that actually gets done.
How Rachael arrived at
The Strategic Step
Rachael's career has taken her through executive leadership, consulting and advisory roles across government, professional services, infrastructure and private sector organisations. After starting her career in Canberra, she moved into people and organisational advisory work, joining PwC's HR team before progressing through a mix of consulting and senior in-house leadership roles.
Over the past two decades she has worked as both a senior executive and trusted adviser to boards, executives and leadership teams. Her experience includes senior roles with EY, the Level Crossing Removal Project and Slater + Gordon, alongside many years advising clients through her own boutique consultancy. Variety, problem-solving and helping organisations navigate complex change are what have kept her firmly on the consulting path.
During the pandemic, Rachael formalised and expanded her consulting practice, building a team to deliver holistic HR services. More recently, she chose to return to a model focused on hands-on strategic advisory work, collaborating with people who share similar values and concentrating on the work she enjoys most.
That's what brought her to The Strategic Step.
"I've never walked away from a client feeling like I haven't added value.
Helping organisations solve real problems and seeing the impact of that work is what keeps me interested."
Rachael’s Approach
Every engagement starts with understanding the organisation's context. Rachael combines stakeholder conversations with a review of existing strategies, data, policies, operating models and workforce information to build a clear picture of what's really happening. That diagnostic phase shapes everything that follows and is often where the most important insights emerge.
She works across the full strategy and implementation lifecycle. One day that might involve facilitating a board or executive workshop, the next designing workforce and people strategies, leading organisational change, reviewing governance and operating models, or stepping into an interim leadership role to provide stability and direction. She works comfortably with boards, executive teams and operational leaders, helping organisations connect strategic intent with practical implementation.
Rachael is valued as a trusted adviser who brings a practical, evidence-based perspective to complex organisational challenges. She's direct about what will add value, what won't, and where effort is best invested. Sometimes that confirms an organisation's assumptions; other times it challenges them. Either way, her advice is grounded in what the evidence shows.
"The best outcomes come from combining evidence, experience and good judgement.
And we're honest about what we think will and won't add value."
What motivates Rachael
Rachael really enjoys the early stage of an engagement, understanding how the organisation operates, listening to different perspectives and working through the information until the real issues and opportunities become clear and she is confident in the way forward.
She also values the long-term relationships that come from good work, when clients return later with a new challenge or simply pick up the phone because they want a trusted sounding board. The referrals are meaningful too. When someone calls because a former client sent them, she knows the work landed.
Rachael lives in Melbourne's Bayside and works with clients across the public sector, utilities, not-for-profit, and services industries.
Connect with Rachael on LinkedIn or book a meeting below.