Excellence in sports administration
Catherine Clark attended Caboolture State High School from 1991 to 1995. She excelled academically and in the sporting field, being both Junior Sportswoman of the Year and Senior Sportswoman of the Year over two years. She was a Stradbroke House Leader and was also a Queensland Representative Hockey Player when still at school.
While studying a Degree in Arts, majoring in Criminology, Catherine suffered a serious injury which sadly ended her elite hockey career. Overcoming this adversity, she later accepted a professional coaching and playing contract in the Netherlands. Catherine’s leap into the international sporting world ignited a desire to harness sport to effect change and unite people and communities. She went on to hold senior roles with the New Zealand Government, leading Sport and Education policy, followed by a consulting role with the Germany-based International Paralympic Committee.
Catherine’s passion for achieving results through building high performing teams led to CEO roles with Gymnastics New Zealand, and then Gymnastics Australia through the Beijing and London Olympics and the Delhi Commonwealth Games. In 2015, Catherine became the CEO of Netball Queensland and the Queensland Firebirds. Under her leadership, the Firebirds have won two Premiership titles, Netball Queensland has built the new $46M state-of-the art Queensland State Netball Centre, and over the past four years, Netball Queensland continues to lead successful business transformation projects.
From her first Board role at 27, Catherine has held a number of Board positions. She is an accredited AICD Company Director and currently serves as a Director of Shooting Australia.
Catherine is recognised as an innovative and future-focused leader who successfully marries the human and business sides of sport. In 2016, Catherine was named as Queensland’s Sport Administrator of the Year and was recently named in the Australian Financial Review’s 100 Most Influential Women for 2019.