Rio Tinto’s White Ribbon Accreditation is honoured at annual CME Women in Resources Awards

Rio Tinto’s White Ribbon Accreditation won the Outstanding Company Initiative award at this year’s Chamber of Minerals and Energy (CME) Women in Resources Awards in Perth, Western Australia today.

Last week Rio Tinto achieved a White Ribbon Workplace Accreditation, recognising the company’s work to eradicate violence affecting employees and the communities in which it operates. The accreditation was achieved through Rio Tinto’s consistent demonstration of effective leadership, resource allocation, communication and human resource policy development. 

White Ribbon’s Workplace Accreditation Programme is internationally recognised and has reached over 600,000 employees nationally. The program has been independently evaluated and referenced by a group of human resources, human rights, domestic violence and education professionals, ensuring a best practice product.

Rio Tinto managing director Australia Joanne Farrell said "Rio Tinto has made a number of important changes to our policies, processes and resources to support our employees and our communities who are affected by family and domestic violence. 

"This is a journey we all need to be on – we want a workplace forever free of fatalities and a community forever free of violence.

"Today, we’re proud to join with the resources sector to celebrate the outstanding contribution of so many inspirational women to our industry. 

"We are privileged to have so many fantastic role models within Rio Tinto, including the finalists today, who are true pioneers for the progress of women in this industry. We’re proud to support the 2018 CME Women in Resources Awards as regional sponsor, demonstrating our commitment to celebrating diversity and achievement within the resources sector."

Rio Tinto also acknowledges the fantastic achievement of Melissa Cundy, Sharron Sutton and Lynn Olssen for being nominated as finalists. 

List of Rio Tinto finalists at 2018 CME Women in Resources Awards:

Melissa Cundy

Lynn Olssen

Sharron Sutton

Rio Tinto – White Ribbon Accreditation

A geologist by trade, Lynn has more than 24 years of experience and has served as Chair of the AusIMM Women in Mining Network Committee, is a member of the Women in Mining WA seminar committee and mentoring program and is the current chair of the Rio Tinto Exploration Australasian I&D Committee. She is also an active member of MCA’s Gender Diversity Reference Group and CME’s Gender Diversity Reference Group.  

As the first non-mining engineer and second female Technical Services manager at Rio Tinto, Sharron proved that a leader without technical expertise could effectively engage and lead a team. Sharron mentors women across many technical disciplines through her work with the National Association of Women in Operations and is an active proponent for STEM education and is involved in Murdoch’s STEM outreach and supports Robogals’ leadership development program. Sharron was pivotal in the development of the Female Forum at our Greater Brockman operations which engaged female and male leaders to run networking events and she has boosted female participation in numerous teams she has managed. 

Melissa’s professional journey has taken her from being the first woman in an underground coal mine in Central Queensland, to Paris and London where she managed feasibility studies for multi-million dollar resources projects. Her continuous improvement work has delivered billions of dollars in productivity gains for our business over the last decade.  She is currently leading a team to deliver our first intelligent mine and actively visits schools encouraging girls to study STEM subjects.