It’s the little details that make Rhonda O’Sullivan tick.
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Last month she took out the Young Professional of the Year at the National Mining and Related Industries Day, an initiative of Western Australian mining magnate Gina Rinehart.
Ms Rinehart planned to attend the event at Mount Isa Mines but had to pull out at the last minute so Ms O’Sullivan later penned a thank you note to her.
“It was a huge shock, but also an amazing and humbling experience, one that I will never forget” Ms O’Sullivan wrote.
“I was also very fortunate to share the experience with two of my most credited mentors (Prof Ian Plimer and Prof Alice Clarke), which made the day even more special… You have inspired me through your altruism to give more and do more.”
Ms O’Sullivan is well on the way to becoming an inspiring woman herself, a fact noted by her peers in the Zonta Club of Mount Isa, which gave her the Women of Achievement award earlier this year.
Her citation read : “Her love of horse-riding and AusIMM involvement see her contributing in community; her professional experience and leadership is consistently demonstrated in a predominantly man’s world of geology and mining; and she has had success in the Women in Leadership Australia program, and is currently obtaining her MBA.” She is actually studying a double masters, the citation left out a Masters of Mineral Economics.
“I’m a glutton for punishment,” she said.
Ms O’Sullivan also laughed modestly at the suggestion she must be doing something right. “Hopefully!” she said.
She started as a graduate with Mount Isa Mines in exploration, then a year in resource modelling before being promoted to her current role in 2013.
“As a geology superintendent I’m responsible for making sure my team defines the copper resource model and making sure we extract that safely,” she said.
Working in Mount Isa came by chance for Ms O’Sullivan, who hails from Victoria.
“I did my honours project in Broken Hill and I met a gentleman at the pub there who was doing some contracting work up here who put me in contact with the exploration manager and I was lucky enough to get an interview,” she said.
Geology wasn’t her first pick as a career.
“I did a few different things at uni in Melbourne and it was an hour and a half drive for me but I never missed any lectures after I started studying earth sciences,” she said.
“In third year I had to decide whether to do that or psychology and I looked around the lecture theatres of both and that was when I decided the earth sciences people were the people I wanted to spend my life with.”