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
Her career started in Canberra, working in Senate committees and on secondment to a federal minister, before a move to Melbourne as a political staffer. When she decided to change direction, workplace relations and HR seemed a natural fit — the shadow minister she'd been working for had been deep in industrial relations legislation — and she joined PwC's internal HR team in the early 2000s.
From there, she moved across internal and consulting roles, including time at EY and work delivered into Deloitte, before landing firmly on the consulting side. Variety, problem-solving, and the satisfaction of genuinely adding value are what consulting gives her that internal roles often couldn't.
After leaving her last internal role during the pandemic, Rachael built her own boutique consultancy, grew a team, and eventually chose to do things differently, working alongside people with the same values rather than managing staff.
That's what brought her to The Strategic Step.
"I've never walked away from a client feeling like I haven't added value.
That can get really lost when you're in an internal role and you become overly invested in the politics."
Rachael’s Approach
Every engagement starts with discovery: stakeholder interviews and a close look at whatever the organisation already has — strategies, policies, data, engagement surveys, system documentation. That diagnostic work shapes everything that follows, and it's where Rachael says she does some of her best thinking.
She works across the full span of the strategy lifecycle. That might mean facilitating a board-level strategic directions workshop, designing how a utility's ELT objectives translate into individual goals for a workforce of hundreds, or stepping into an interim people and culture leadership role while an organisation steadies itself.
She's direct about what she thinks will add value and what won't, including when the answer a client gets isn't the one they were expecting. Discovery is honest; results are what they are.
"We've got skin in the game.
We really understand the client's needs; we've walked in their shoes.
And we're honest about what we think will and won't add value."
What motivates Rachael
The most satisfying point in any engagement, Rachael says, is when she genuinely understands the problem, before the solution exists, and feels confident in the work ahead. Getting to that point of clarity is what keeps her interested.
The referrals are meaningful too. When someone calls because a former client sent them, she knows the work landed.
Rachael is based 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.