Kelly's Story: Treating Transparency as Foundational

Throughout my career in engineering and risk management across various line sites, I kept coming back to the same conclusion: the industry cries out about the need to garner wider support for mining, but it just couldn’t really connect with audiences that we so desperately need to be successful.

There is a significant gap between how we want to operate for public acceptance and how those operations are perceived. It results in a lack of capital and incredibly long project delays.

Instead of inviting critics in to have open dialogue, we often use the message “If it can’t be grown it must be mined” to justify our existence. This is certainly true. It also feels standoffish, does not attract interest, and does not earn widespread support.

I did not have a lightning bolt moment where this snapped into focus. I only developed a strong opinion once I became more engaged in industry advocacy. What I saw, over time, felt systemic.

It looks like cognitive dissonance. We need support, but we often treat education and real relationship building as optional. We talk about the lack of acceptance, conference after conference, and we keep preaching to the choir. Then we default to a position that presents as, “You need us more than we need you, so fine.” That is not an actionable strategy.

I do not say that as a moral critique. I say it as an operational observation. If we need people to invest in projects and accept the role mining plays for society, we have to treat relationship building, on a macro-level, as part of industry-wide advocacy while at the micro-level, treat organization-to- community relationships as real work. We have to treat learning, explaining, listening, and responding as part of how a project gets done.

When Beth first shared her vision for Maven, it was an instant yes.

When Beth invited me to that first call, I saw the opportunity to build something meaningful with women I deeply respect. The women I saw on the screen, the others that said yes, know their stuff. I also wanted to learn, stretch, and have a lot of fun in the process.

What I saw as possible was straightforward.

If a mining company is built differently from the start, with a focus on holistic outcomes, it has the potential to attract more positive things to the industry as a whole. That can show up in investment, who we attract into the sector, and in general sentiment.

For me, Maven represents a practical idea. When projects are developed with a transparent process and respect to the community as a foundational element, we create the conditions for wider investment and stronger support while maintaining profitability. Two things can be true at once: we can operate to build a positive, sustainable legacy and provide return on investment.

What influenced my values

My own career has set me up to care about that connection between what we need and how we behave.

I thought my engineering degree meant that is what I had to do for the rest of my life. Tailings engineering was a great niche. I also liked managing large scale projects and programs. I loved putting all the pieces together for “the big picture”. I found that I could build teams and strategy well, and that changed the work I wanted to do.

I helped start a new office for an established mid-size consulting firm. Later, I learned techniques to help clients define and execute their strategies more formally. When I decided to leave consulting, I asked myself what I actually wanted out of work. I landed on mining, strategy, and service.

That took me in a direction I did not expect. I led the US mining practice for a major global commercial insurance broker. This is where I learned about risk management and how it intersects with finance. It was the perfect education to develop the expertise I needed to be a co-founder of another company, Precision Mineral Accounting, a mineral asset verification firm that shares the same values as Maven.

What I do with Maven

At Maven and beyond, my leadership approach is direct and thoughtfully critical. I have always been a challenger. In practice, I function as an internal advisor, and to some extent, a gut check.

I am not positioning myself as the contrarian voice, but as someone who can help the team see around corners. I help the team identify the risks in their decision-making inputs and processes and help them build the systems they need to be successful under pressure. I believe commitment, integrity, and a team mindset all matter equally. I believe that commitment means working with purpose for our business, my fellow founders, our investors, and the communities with which we will build our projects. I also believe systems need to be robust and flexible, because real work changes as you learn. Fairness guides my decisions, especially when challenges show up.

When people ask me what being radical means, I think of it as action. It means being unafraid to test a new approach. It means expecting bumps, and even failure, then using the lesson.

That is the spirit I bring to Maven. We are building in the open and we treat transparency as part of the work, and community respect as foundational. We are building toward outcomes that hold more than a single driver.

If you are exploring how to participate in mining with understanding, we would like to talk.