At a time when the world is racing to solve climate and energy challenges, one Aboriginal woman is leading with a different kind of knowledge.
Renee Wootton Tomlin, founder of New Era Energy, is not just working in aviation; she is rethinking it.
An aerospace engineer and pilot, she is building what could become the world's first Indigenous-led sustainable aviation fuel platform, and this work goes far beyond fuel, as it is about who gets a seat at the table and who gets to shape what comes next.
For Ms Wootton Tomlin, the answer is clear.
"For me, it's not a paradox. It's the only logical starting point," she says, adding that Country is not a backdrop to what they are building, but rather the framework.
That thinking challenges everything that has come to be accepted about industry, leadership and innovation.
At the center of New Era Energy is a different way of doing business, one that brings together technical expertise, commercial thinking and cultural responsibility from the very beginning, rather than layering it in later or adding it on as a value statement.
"When we say New Era Energy is grounded in Care for Country, we mean it structurally. Every decision is assessed through that lens," she says.
"My family is the foundation. My Aunty and my nan are the reason I know who I am and what I'm responsible to. Before any boardroom, before any strategy, there were those women."
That legacy shows up in how she builds.
New Era Energy is about creating space and ensuring that young Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people can see themselves in industries where they have not always been visible.
"The future needs you specifically. Not a version of you that's been smoothed into something more palatable, but you," Renee says.
Her words land with weight because they are lived.
Like many Aboriginal women, she has navigated spaces where she was the only one in the room, and she has carried self-doubt, pushed through limited access and stepped into industries that were never designed with her in mind.
However, she also speaks to something just as powerful, which is community.
"No one builds anything alone. And if they tell you they did, they're not being honest," she says.
That village of support, mentors, programs and peers has shaped her journey, and now she is doing the same for others.
This reflects a broader shift taking place across the country, where Aboriginal women are not just participating in business, but leading it, shaping industries, creating pathways and building things that will outlast them. They are doing this in a way that stays true to who they are.
CEDA Panel with Martin Luther King III on Indigenous talent and economic prosperity. (L-R Ben Wyatt, Mr King, Linda Burney, Renee Wootton Tomlins, and Adam Davids). Image: supplied.
Ms Wootton Tomlin is part of that movement, representing a new generation of leadership that is not waiting for permission, not asking for space, but creating it.
"The energy transition will happen with or without us. The question is whether we're owners or observers," she says.
This marks a significant shift, moving from being consulted to being decision makers, and from being included to leading.
In an industry long shaped by fossil fuels, her work is a reminder that different ways of thinking have always existed, and that they have been practiced, protected and passed down for tens of thousands of years.
What is now being seen is those ways of thinking stepping forward into spaces that need them the most.
This story is about more than aviation and more than energy.
It is about Aboriginal women, Aboriginal businesses, collective futures and Country.
Leaders like Renee Wootton Tomlin are showing exactly what that looks like, as it is grounded in culture, driven by purpose and built with a responsibility not just to succeed, but to bring others with them.
