French has 24 years’ experience in the industry and some words of advice for women looking to advance their mining careers. Pic: Supplied.
Mining
Lefroy Exploration has added Cazaly Resources (ASX:CAZ) MD and career geologist Tara French to its board as an independent non-executive director.
The move is kind of a big deal for women in mining, who historically are unrepresented at the management level – let alone in the boardroom.
And Lefroy Exploration (ASX:LEX) is thrilled to have nabbed French in the role.
“To attract someone of Tara’s calibre is a strong reflection of the strength of the company’s exploration portfolio and pipeline of projects,” chairman Gordon Galt said.
“Tara will add key skills and experience to the board to complement the company’s existing directors and management team.”
Stockhead spoke to French about why she jumped at the opportunity, her experience in mining with Regis Resources (ASX:RRL) and Cazaly, as well as her advice for women making a career for themselves in the industry.
“LEX have an experienced board and a very exciting project at Lake Lefroy. The Burns system looks to be something quite unique and defining the nature and extent of the mineralised system and its economic potential could have significant implications for strategic exploration across the entire Yilgarn.
“I have 25 years’ experience working as a geologist in the exploration/mining industry; 14 years were spent with Regis Resources where the exploration team added 7Moz of resources to the inventory base and converted ≈85% to reserves.
”The processes involved in taking a virgin discovery through resource and reserve estimation to mining provided me with knowledge and skills across a wide range of processes.
“All of which contribute to critical economic assessment of projects, and options for development pathways.”
“There have been so many good times during my career. During my time with Regis, apart from finding +4Moz of gold through virgin discoveries (surely every geologist’s dream), the most rewarding discovery for me as a geologist was Regis’ largest virgin gold discovery in the Duketon Greenstone Belt at Garden Well.
“The most rewarding times for me as a leader at Regis was supporting the acceleration of young people’s careers, building a team that were willing to embrace change, adopt and implement new technology for the benefit of the exploration division, ultimately to increase the chances of discovery in a limited search space. Enabling this type of growth in another persons’ career development is very rewarding.
The highlight of my career to date was stepping into the Chief Executive Officer and Managing Director Role at Cazaly Resources just over 12 months ago.
“I am very proud to be leading Cazaly into their next chapter, and after 12 months working with the team, I believe we are now gaining momentum. I still have a very strong desire for success, and with the excellent technical team at Cazaly we are certainly well placed to deliver results.”
“I believe it can contribute to a better balance in the boardroom and the flow on to workplace culture. It’s also vital to show young women that there are longer term successful career pathways in the industry.
“Women in leadership roles should be considered more “the norm” moving forward, if the sector truly wants a positive and respectful culture to resonate throughout it will be essential to have greater diversity in leadership roles.
“To achieve this, we will need to have more women enter the industry, the discussion around opportunities for career paths in mining needs to occur at a relatively early stage in the education stream, e.g. STEM in primary school and high school.”
“While both men and women are taking steps to support women moving into leadership roles, opportunities for growth should be extended equally to all persons with the required and desired skill sets – not just the squeaky wheels.
“I still believe the best ‘person’ for the job should be employed every time, but the opportunities must be provided equally to all viable candidates.”
“If you are driven and work hard, you will succeed.
“Learn all you can from others across all levels of the business and treat them all with the same level of respect.
“Show an interest in other staff members’ jobs – what are they doing on the ground?
“Determine the path you want to take and work towards making it happen.
“We all have setbacks and make mistakes, just learn from them, dust yourself off and get back to work.
“Always back yourself! (My old boss used to say that to me, it’s a good one.)
“Attend networking events wherever possible, make an effort to surround yourself with positive people with similar goals and ambition; also, meet new people in the sector you would like to work with.”
This article was developed in collaboration with Lefroy Exploration, a Stockhead advertiser at the time of publishing.
This article does not constitute financial product advice. You should consider obtaining independent advice before making any financial decisions.
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