Michele has spent the past 19 years working in the mineral exploration industry, beginning as a project manager and junior geologist and working her way to various managerial roles. She has worked in both small and large companies within the mining sector including Freeport-McMoRan and more recently BHP, working projects across the exploration value chain from generative to pre-feasibility studies.

Throughout her career, Michele has been passionate about data, technology, and their application to exploration. She has worked with teams in agile ways to create deployable data science workflows and prospectivity assessments to augment, enhance and interrogate geologic datasets across multiple commodities based mineral systems, including porphyry copper, sediment hosted copper, nickel and uranium. She has been a key contributor to BHP’s recent global scale endowment studies of both petroleum and copper resources, and in the process, guiding frontier research programs at multiple universities in the US and Australia.

In addition, Michele has managed multiple operations in the field, including mapping and sampling projects, geophysical survey acquisition (land and airborne) and drilling. She has managed full-service drill programs including hiring and supervising employees/contractors, negotiating land/water usage, permitting, designing and building drill roads and drill pads, drill hole planning, management of drill rig and core analysis. Michele has also provided guidance on US mineral title work and she has been a key interface with corporate affairs for mineral exploration support in communities and government.