Anglo American took out top honours at this year’s Queensland Resources Council’s (QRC) Resources Awards for Women (RAW), when Graduate Mechanical Engineer Cindy Emmett won the Rising Star award and Moranbah North apprentice heavy diesel mechanic, Megan Turner, received Highly Commended in the Tradesperson category.
Announced at the annual QRC International Women’s Day breakfast held at the Brisbane Convention Centre, more than 400 people from across industry came together to celebrate women in mining and recognise trail-blazing women working in non-traditional roles and progressing to senior positions.
Only a few years into her mining career, Cindy Emmett has already been heavily involved in start-up design work on the Grosvenor project in Moranbah and has ensured key facilities like bathhouses and the broader working environment cater to women. She is passionate about encouraging young women to consider resources as an exciting career choice and co-facilitates Anglo American’s annual “4Girls2” Queensland Minerals and Energy Academy breakfast and workshop for high school-aged girls.
“As a mature-aged student and single mother, against some tough odds I have been determined to succeed in my career, but I know there are many highly capable women out there who may be too scared to give it a try or who don’t know how to get started,” Cindy said.
“Through my role I have been trying to do all I can to encourage those women and provide advice on meaningful steps they can take to ensure they are recognised and provided with opportunities.”
Anglo American’s Diversity and Inclusion Specialist for Australia and previous winner of the Diversity Champion RAW award, Rebecca Capper, said the RAW awards were an effective way to identify those women paving the way for others, and provide a platform for them to then share their advice through role modelling and mentoring.
“RAW provides a fantastic opportunity for us to recognise and learn from those women in our business and the broader industry excelling in non-traditional roles,” Rebecca said.
“Anglo American has made great progress to increase the representation of women in our business, with women rising by 32 per cent since 2010.
“But increasing the numbers is just the first step, our challenge as an industry is to retain and develop the talented women who have chosen the resources industry to build their career so they progress to senior positions and bring about effective change to help our industry evolve and become fundamentally inclusive,” Rebecca said.
“Anglo American was proud to recently launch an internal mentoring program as part of this.”
As the first woman diesel fitter apprentice at Moranbah North mine, Megan Turner had an important role to play in demonstrating to the broader workforce the real contribution a woman can make.
“I am driven to achieve a long-time dream of mine to secure a full trade qualification. While women in the mining environment are becoming more and more common, you still come across people who expect you to fail because you’re a woman. I am determined to prove them wrong,” Megan said.
Megan is now in her fourth year of her apprenticeship and works unassisted on the overhauls, rebuilds and repairs on the equipment used to support production at the mine. Following Megan’s appointment, the first women-only bathhouses were established at Moranbah North and in 2012 Megan was awarded Moranbah North’s Apprentice of the Year accolade in recognition of her unrelenting hard work.
Coal Executive Head of Human Resources and Corporate Affairs, David Diamond, congratulated Cindy and Megan on their awards and said he looked forward to the Anglo American business continuing to build an inclusive environment that enabled women to join, develop and live their full potential.
ENDS –