Colleen Nansett was one of the first qualified female engineers in New Zealand. In 1956 she was New Zealand’s first and only professional woman radio engineer.
Colleen Kelly (neé Nansett) in 1956, just before she took up a summer scholarship at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Ref: EP/1956/2740-F. Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington, New Zealand. /records/22462710
Colleen Nansett was born on 4 February 1933 in Palmerston North, the second child of Eric Nansett and Winifred Fitzgerald. Eric Nansett worked for the Post Office and moved around the lower North Island a lot for work, especially when he was younger. In 1941, he and the family made one more move when he was promoted to head office in Wellington.
Colleen attended St Anthony’s (later St Bernard’s) in Brooklyn and then St Mary’s in Thorndon. The Mercy nuns there identified her aptitude for maths and moved her into a professional stream, as opposed to the traditional commercial stream that most girls then followed. She went on to be dux of St Mary’s in 1950.
In 1951, Colleen became the first member of her extended family to go to university. She followed on from her secondary education and enrolled in a BSc in Physics, Radio Physics, Chemistry and Maths. While entering a predominantly male domain at university was something of a culture shock, her skills in writing made her invaluable to some of her male classmates. Despite feeling like she was always catching up, she graduated in three years. She even took – and passed – a science language test for French.
At this point, her father intervened and organised a job for her at the radio section of the Post Office. There were no other women working in this area at the Post Office, so she was paid the same as the men – almost unheard of in the public service then.
In 1955, she passed her qualifying exam in electrical engineering from the Institution of Electrical Engineers in London and became an Associate Fellow. By this time, these exams had become quite challenging, especially for those wanting to do it through part-time study or correspondence courses. Within a decade, this qualification was universally done by degree in New Zealand.
Colleen’s exploits were noticed by the press and every time she did something notable, newspapers tracked her down. Headlines from the time capture how unusual her achievements were. ‘Woman Engineer Granted Fellowship’, ‘Girl’s Unique Career in Post Office’, or ‘Electronics is her job – happens to be quite good at Mathematics’, were just some of the many headlines she generated.
The Press described the work she was doing for the Post Office in March 1956.
Miss Nansett is at present carrying out engineering investigations both on the drawing boards and in the field to fix sites for relay stations for very high frequency radio trunk lines.
That same month, Colleen was awarded a four-month scholarship to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and this only increased the attention on her. Only two of these were handed out each year to each participating country. She was assigned to the Research Laboratory of Electronics at MIT in Boston, which was followed by a study tour of the United States. Her travel was paid for by the New Zealand government.
She returned to New Zealand and more press attention and then settled back into her work. However, despite all her achievements, she never particularly enjoyed the male dominated environment at the radio section, to the point that in early 1960 she transferred to work in the radio section library to get away from it. Although she made and kept good friends in the radio section, that was the end of her electrical engineering work at the Post Office.
In 1961, Colleen Nansett married Dan Kelly, a teacher, and she spent much of the next 20 years of her life raising four children. She returned to work but never in the field that she trained for. She may have been a reluctant trailblazer and her career was relatively short, but Colleen Nansett was one of the first two qualified female engineers in the country.
Further reading
“Girl’s Unique Career in Post Office”, New Zealand Herald, 16 March 1956.
“Radio toll lines”, Press, 20 March 1956, p9.
“Advanced study in U.S.”, Press, 26 March 1956, p6.
“Wellington Sisters Touring the United States,” Evening Post, 15 October 1956, p9.
“Post Office's First Girl Engineer Back From U.S.” Evening Post, 26 November 1956, p14.
Page last updated 21 April 2026
