Meet the Ripplers: Kellie Clenton

Meet Kellie

Meet Kellie Clenton, Rippling's Product Lead for Australia and New Zealand, and our first R&D hire in the region. When she’s not iterating on Global Payroll, you’ll find her scrambling up a steep ridge or trimming sails on Pittwater in Sydney — perfecting how to keep calm and collected while tackling ambitious challenges. See how Kellie takes her innate drive to work and ensures our customers get paid smoothly and fairly, every day.

State of flow

I've always been attracted to doing difficult things. When you look at the things I do for fun—hiking and sailing—those pursuits aren't about a quick hit. They're all about the satisfaction of achieving something that can only be realised through putting in the energy.

I was just in New Zealand hiking down on South Island, and there was one hike that was two and a half hours of hard vertical scramble through the bush to get to the top for an incredible view of Mount Earnslaw and the mouth of the Dart River. I only spent about 20 minutes there just looking at the mountains, resting to eat my sandwich, and having this moment of stillness and appreciation for the environment – but there’s something about that sense of achievement, of seeing the view that isn’t accessible in any other way, that keeps me coming back for more.

Sailing is similar—it's incredibly technical, and when it's working, you get into a state of flow. You can actually feel the momentum and velocity of the boat moving underneath you when everything's working in concert. You have to maintain awareness of what's happening around you and I can get lost in that for hours at a time—it's a very present activity.

That satisfaction of doing hard things and this kind of calm in challenging circumstances is definitely useful at Rippling, where the work is anything but boring.

Why global payroll?

Payroll may not sound exciting at face value, but it’s notoriously complex and difficult to do well, which is what makes the work we’re doing so compelling. When you think about why we all go to work, one of the reasons is to be paid. We're really talking about a person's sense of psychological safety—am I being fairly rewarded for the way that I spend my time? But getting paid isn't just about basic needs like paying rent; it's also the vehicle to achieve the things you want to do in your life outside of your job. It’s a privilege to be entrusted with the responsibility to make sure people get paid accurately and on time.

Having worked in product, strategy and operations, and in go-to-market, leading teams in businesses where nothing's interoperable, I've seen firsthand how disruptive and inefficient siloed stacks can be, from headcount planning to compensation cycles to the fundamentals of paying people. These experiences don't respect the contribution that people are making at work, and they erode employees’ sense of confidence that you're putting everything you have into your employer and they're looking after you with the same degree of care.

Going forward, together

My personal values are honesty, integrity, and fairness. Those are the three driving forces for how I show up at work and in life. At Rippling, we're all trying to run at the speed of light in the same direction, so the approach I take is always assuming positive intent and always assuming that we're on the same team. There's something really energizing about engaging people in a way that's grounded in, “How do we go forward together?” This mindset encourages cross-functional teams to get all our cards on the table and focus on the solution that gets us the best case scenario for our customers.

Working at Rippling, I’d like to get to a place where we're looking back and saying, “Yeah, we did it.” I can already see where changes I've pushed for have had a meaningful impact on our ability to win. The scale of our ambition is audacious and I’m looking forward to telling my friends and family that I was part of building this generational company.

This blog is based on information available to Rippling as of June 6, 2025.

Disclaimer: Rippling and its affiliates do not provide tax, accounting, or legal advice. This material has been prepared for informational purposes only, and is not intended to provide or be relied on for tax, accounting, or legal advice. You should consult your own tax, accounting, and legal advisors before engaging in any related activities or transactions.