Mandurah Catholic College students celebrated International Women’s day last week with a special visit to the Alcoa Myara mine site.

The students met with the Alcoa Women’s Network and were partnered with a female Alcoa mentor who gave them an insight into their work at the Alcoa Huntly mine site’s Myara facilities, in roles as diverse as environmental rehabilitation, human resources, geology and operation planning.

MCC 2008 graduate Stephanie Lyons was one of the mentors who shared her experiences, goals and successes working as an Environmental Advisor with Alcoa.

Student Larissa O’Malley shadowed an Environmental Scientist for the morning and grabbed the opportunity to climb into a haul truck and see how it felt to be a woman in mining.

“Celebrating International Women’s Day at Alcoa was an amazing experience. To see what jobs are available for women in the mining industry was very empowering and showed me that there are many opportunities in a stereotypical male job field,” Larissa said. “It was really interesting to find out what backgrounds the women came from, their past academic history and how they got into their positions.”

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