New Team Member: Jan Graham, Principal Consultant

We are continually growing our team of experts, and today the team at Snowden is excited to introduce you to our newest team member Jan Graham, who many may know from her many years in the industry.

Here’s an interview we did with Jan to get to know her a bit better:

Can you tell us a bit about yourself?

I’m a Resource Geo with 14 years experience in the Mining Industry.  I started out in my career with Datamine in the UK and spent 4 years providing training and software implementations all over West Africa and Europe.  After a move to Australia in 2011, I joined Snowden where I learned about Mineral Resource Estimation, honed my skills and worked with some of the best in the business.  I’ve since utilized those skills working at different consultancies.  My previous role was with Mining Plus, where I worked with some awesome people on a variety of deposits globally.  I was also lucky enough to spend 2 years on site secondments with Northern Star, consulting and covering roles at four of their Kalgoorlie Operations.

Datamine Studio RM and Supervisor are my favourite mining software packages and I love showing and teaching people about the power of both!

Can you explain some of the challenges you consult to your clients on in a few sentences and how you help them improve?

I really enjoy working with clients who are just stepping into doing Resource estimation, they usually have a solid practical geology background and are looking to learn more.  For me, this is great as I like sharing my knowledge and experience.  On site, I found that clients often know what they want to do but aren’t always sure about how to tackle the task.  There’s always more than one way – I like giving people options, the confidence to give it a go and see what works best for themselves.    

What inspired your career in this industry?

As a teenager, I came on holiday to WA with a friend and we spent a week camping out in a cave at Margaret River with her brother and his geo mates.  They talked about the geology of the area and their work as exploration geos, and I was hooked.  I went back to the UK did an A level and a degree in Geology, followed by a Masters in Mine Geology at Camborne School of Mines. Since then, pretty much every holiday has been a geology field trip and 25 years later – I’m still living the dream! 😉

What is the most satisfying aspect of your role / the work you do?

I love the process of undertaking an MRE from start to finish. From reviewing the data and playing geo-detective all the way through to modelling, estimation and classification, it’s fun! And learning – as a consultant, you are exposed to many different projects and deposits, there is always something new to be learned.

What are your best memories from your career?

Some of the best memories are from planning drillholes and hitting mineralization! It’s exciting heading up to the core shed to see what has come out of the hole. One of my best work trips involved hiking around the Dolomites in Italy for three days taking photos for a Sirovision project – I couldn’t believe I was being paid to do that!

What’s a fun fact about you?

I love being active, I’m a die-hard runner and have represented Great Britain at two World Championship events.

 

Interested to work with Jan in an Advisory work – enquire with her directly via LinkedIn or send us an enquiry.