She freely admits to being hedonistic in her youth. She took multiple gap years. She left Canberra for Wollongong because she wanted to be near the beach.

But over time, she realised that she couldn't ignore the the world's problems - principally climate change - or how her actions contributed to them.

If she had to pick a moment when that sense of obligation crystallised in her mind, it would be the birth of her daughter.

"For someone who probably didn't spend a lot of time genuinely thinking about what the world's going to be like in 50 years' time ... when you have a child, suddenly .. you are no longer living for yourself, she said."

It is Clay's daughter, and the other children she has marched alongside at school strikes for climate action, from whom she'll feel the greatest weight of expectation and obligation when she sits in the chamber of the ACT Legislative Assembly in the next four years.

"I am very conscious that I come from a position where I can see big problems and call them out," she said.

"But the difference with where I am sitting now is that people are relying on me and expecting me to do that."

The Canberra Times spoke to Clay - one of six Greens elected at last October's election - for a series profiling the new members in the ACT Legislative Assembly ahead of parliament's return next month.

Clay will represent the seat of Ginninderra, the sprawling Belconnen-based electorate which covers her childhood suburb of Weetangera.

Four decades on she lives just one suburb over in Macquarie.

But she's been constantly on the move in the intervening years, venturing overseas on multiple gap years and making numerous career switches.

The Radford College alum initially followed in her father's footsteps, graduating with a law degree.

In an experience she with now recounts with a hint of humour and disbelief, Clay found herself working in counter terrorism at the federal Attorney-General department not long after the September 11 attacks.

"It wasn't a good fit for me," she joked. "I didn't really like what I was doing ethically."

It was toward the end of an enjoyable stint with the ACT Law Society that Clay had a realisation that would set her on a path - an ultimately winding one - into politics. The legal profession was great, she concluded, but it was not actually "dealing with the big problems".

She began volunteering with cycling lobby group Pedal Power, a role which both "filled her with joy" and showed the ease with which smart ideas could be put into practice in the ACT.

Clay pivoted to the field of waste management, starting with the ACT government before forming her own company, Send and Shred.

She had always voted Green but had never considered running for office until a conversation with Tim Hollo - a prominent party figure who contested the most recent federal election - prompted her to put up her hand.

It proved a career, and life-changing decision, as Clay rode the Green wave on October 17 to pinch a seat off of the Canberra Liberals in Ginninderra.

"I did not particularly expect that I would be holding a seat [after the election]," she said.

"I go through life doing things because they need to be done, not necessarily doing them because I want to get a particular outcome for me or a particular kind of reward."

Clay will sit alongside colleagues Andrew Braddock and Johnathan Davis on the Legislative Assembly crossbench, and will be the party's voice on transport, waste and recycling, arts and women's issues.

But as the conclusion to her inaugural speech to parliament made abundantly clear, one issue motivates her above all else.

"We are in a climate emergency and I know what we need to do," she said in that speech.

"We need to do everything and we need to do it now."