Robyn Clay-Williams

[2] She was inspired by Deborah Lawrie initiating a sex discrimination case against Ansett Australia in the late 1970s when her application to become an airline pilot was rejected.

[6] Williams served in a unit which maintained C-130 Hercules and Boeing 707 aircraft, and was later a divisional officer at the Australian Defence Force Academy.

[2][5] From January to December 1993 Flight Lieutenant Williams undertook training at the International Test Pilots School in the United Kingdom.

[7][9] She reviewed large quantities of technical documentation as part of the RAAF's acquisition of twelve Lockheed Martin C-130J Super Hercules aircraft.

Her familiarity with the type led to a posting to the United States in 1995 where she was the resident project test pilot for the process of accepting the aircraft into RAAF service.

As part of the testing process Williams found that the C-130J's head-up display had been installed at a height which made the aircraft unsuitable for the majority of female military pilots, including herself.

[9] She met her husband David Clay in the United States, and was seven months pregnant when she signed the documentation to accept the RAAF's final C-130J.

[11] After leaving the RAAF, Clay-Williams completed a doctorate which involved developing a crew resource management-based approach to training in the healthcare sector.

[13] Clay-Williams' academic areas of interest include "teams and teamwork, decision-making, leadership, simulation, resilience engineering, and usability test and evaluation of medical devices and IT systems".