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An inside look at API’s leadership development initiatives, including our early career and mid-career programs, and how we collaborate with industry to grow future executives from graduate hires.
As Australia navigates a once-in-a-generation energy transition, the power sector is under increasing pressure to deliver infrastructure and innovation at speed and scale. Meeting this challenge will require more than technical excellence. It will demand vision, cross-sector collaboration, stakeholder savvy, and leaders who can operate with strategic insight. At the Australian Power Institute (API), we believe leadership development should begin early—and be embedded in real-world experience from the outset.
That’s why we’ve built a suite of leadership development initiatives that grow with engineers and professionals across their career. From undergraduate programs to mid-career capability-building, our goal is to ensure the sector has the leaders it needs for the future, starting from graduate hires and building all the way to future executives.
“At the start of the Summer School, I felt a mix of uncertainty and trepidation. Spending two weeks with a group of people I had never met before was initially intimidating. However, those feelings quickly transformed into a sense of camaraderie and shared purpose. By the end of the program, our cohort had become a close-knit team, united by discussions about challenges, solutions, and strategies to address the energy transition. The professional relationships formed during these two weeks are ones I will carry forward for a lifetime.“ Manju Puthanveetil BE MIEAust CPEng APEC Engineer IntPE(Aus), Endeavour Energy – 2025 Summer School Participant.
API Summer School: A Flagship for Future Leaders
At the heart of our leadership development efforts is the API Summer School, widely regarded as the premier professional development program for aspiring leaders in the power sector. For over two decades, this immersive experience has helped early- to mid-career professionals develop the critical skills, strategic insights, and cross-industry networks needed to lead the energy transition.
The API Summer School is not a conference. It’s a transformative, multi-week journey that blends learning, challenge, and connection. Structured into both online and in-person components, the program brings together a diverse cohort of around 50 participants from across Australia, representing utilities, networks, renewables, regulators, government, and suppliers.
Fireside Chats with Industry Executives
The program kicks off with a curated series of online ‘fireside chats’ that offer unparalleled access to strategic knowledge from senior leaders. Executives from across the energy ecosystem share not just their insights into sector trends, but the challenges they grapple with
daily—from grid resilience and regulatory complexity to workforce capability and digital transformation.
These sessions provide participants with context, confidence, and an understanding of the bigger picture. They also lay the groundwork for participants to engage with more complex, interdisciplinary problems during the face-to-face component of the program.
“The highlight for me was a hands-on group exercise where we had to work on our challenge question defined by Jasmine Doak – “How can we ensure local communities and Traditional Owners genuinely and enduringly share the economic benefits of Australia’s next resources boom: the transition to renewable energy”. Coming from a technical background, this task has challenged me to do intense research about the existing policies and current benefit sharing schemes across Australia. But most importantly, to come up recommendations that addresses these ongoing challenges within the given two week’s period.” Vishnu Ramaraj (RPEQ, CPEng, NER), Energy Queensland – 2025 Summer School Participant.
