Standing at the Beginning of Something New

It was in January 2025 that I found myself at a crossroads. I have always been someone who moves through life with a great deal of structure and self-discipline, someone constantly focused on the next task, the next responsibility, the next thing to work towards. But after nine years of consulting, I could feel that momentum beginning to wear me down.

I had been working in the field of social performance for almost a decade, mostly with two consultancy companies, focusing on mining and other types of infrastructure projects in different parts of the world. I had genuinely enjoyed the work, but I had reached a point where I felt deeply tired by it. Consulting can become a kind of constant motion where one project rolls directly into the next, and you never quite feel caught up. By the time one assignment had finished, another assignment was already overdue. I remember thinking that if I did not step away for a while and do something different, I might end up leaving the industry altogether.

Around the time I was feeling this way, a PhD opportunity appeared. The project was focused on critical mineral resource development in Greenland and caught my eye because it connected so closely with the work I had been doing in my professional career. I had always imagined that if I ever returned to academia, I would want it to be in a way that enabled my industry experience to be drawn upon somehow. The project felt aligned with that hope. I figured that I had little to lose and so I applied. I was fortunate enough to be offered the position and, to my surprise, ranked first amongst hundreds of applicants competing for ten funded doctoral positions.

Now, approximately nine months into my PhD, I still feel as though I am standing at the beginning of something in a way. My research focuses broadly on how Greenland’s critical minerals sector can be developed in ways that protect and promote human and ecological well-being. The mining industry has a complicated and often harmful history in many places, and my research is partly shaped around how mining projects in Greenland might learn from those histories rather than repeat them. I am very much a student within the Arctic context because, although I have worked in many parts of the world, I do not have a lot of experience in the region, and I have never worked in Greenland before.

When I think back to where all this really started, I often return to a moment when I was at college in the UK. Geography was the subject I loved the most, but I received disappointing results in my first-year exams. One tutor questioned why I was planning to continue with the subject at all since I was “clearly not very good at it”. At the time, it was one sentence that carried enormous weight. Looking back, I can see how differently things might have unfolded had I accepted that skepticism too easily. I decided to hold onto geography and re-sit the exam, thereby enabling me to continue studying it at university.

My first years at university were difficult in ways that were not always visible from the outside. To others, I probably seemed capable and confident enough, but internally I carried a huge amount of inner criticism and self-doubt. I felt surrounded by people who appeared more competent and more naturally suited to academic life than I was. My mental health suffered during that period, and I carried a lot of uncertainty within me.

Things shifted somewhat in 2014 when I spent a year on a study abroad programme in Singapore. I travelled around Southeast Asia whilst I was there and made some wonderful friends along the way. Looking back now, I think that period changed my relationship with myself in some ways, as well as my relationship with the world around me. By the time I returned to the UK for my final year at university, I felt calmer and less consumed by pressure. I worked hard but I was more relaxed and, perhaps unsurprisingly, that more relaxed approach produced my strongest academic year.

Travel has remained one of the defining parts of my life ever since my time in Singapore. I am curious by nature and have always been drawn towards other places, other ways of living and other peoples’ stories. When I started working as a consultant in 2016, firstly with RSK and later with Ramboll, I discovered very quickly that the thing I valued most about the work was not only the projects I was involved in but also the opportunity to spend time in other countries, learning from people whose lives and experiences were very different from my own. I have always been fascinated by other people and places.

The consulting work itself focused on social risk and impact management on mining and other projects. Sometimes I worked for infrastructure developers and extractive companies, other times for export credit agencies and commercial banks. Part of why the work mattered so much to me was because I found myself emotionally invested in it. I tend to absorb things emotionally rather than hold them at a distance, which proved to be both a strength and weakness in my career. On the one hand, being emotionally invested meant that I was highly motivated and committed to the work, with a strong sense of purpose when I got up each day. On the other hand, I found it harder to detach and “switch off” as a result.

Still, there were extraordinary moments that came from the life the work gave me. Some of the stories sound almost absurd when I look back on them now. One that I often come back to happened during my time on a project in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq. I had been staying at a remote oil and gas facility camp several hours from the regional capital. On the morning that I was due to return to the capital for my flight home, I woke up feeling extremely sick with what turned out to be some kind of bacterial infection.

I should have stayed behind to recover, but I was worried about disrupting the plans of the rest of the group that I was travelling with. There were eight of us, our vehicles were all organised and the necessary security arrangements had been put in place for our journey back to the airport. I told myself that I just needed to get through the journey and would feel fine later on. Instead, during the drive, I became progressively more unwell and kept having to stop on highways and in villages to deal with my symptoms, often in blistering desert heat. Because of the local security situation, several armed guards were accompanying us back to the airport. Every time I got out of the vehicle, they had to get out too.

By the time we reached the capital, I was severely dehydrated and ended up spending two days in hospital and then on bed rest before eventually catching a flight home. I can make light of the situation now, but I often use it as an example when speaking to other colleagues, particularly those who are younger than me. “Don’t feel like an inconvenience simply because you need help”, I often say. That experience highlighted my tendency to try to avoid causing problems for others; in reality, I probably caused more problems for the rest of the group than I would have done had I stayed behind at the camp to recover first! “Use your voice” is one of the main lessons I took from it.

GEMS Unearthed has prompted me again to think about the use of my own voice. Initially I questioned whether I should participate at all because I doubted that my story would be interesting enough and that I had enough experience in the mining industry to be worthy of a place in the archive. The exercises also felt strangely self-indulgent, though not negatively so. It simply felt unusual to spend quality time reflecting on myself rather than focusing on the next task or responsibility. I have learned that there is great value in doing such self-reflection, and that all stories are worthy of being heard, even my own.

Outside of work and study, my life has always been grounded in and revolved around my relationships with others, in particular my friends and family. I consider myself part introvert, part extrovert. I love being around other people, and draw a great deal of energy from them, but I equally value my own solitude and space. Eating well and keeping active, mainly through daily walks and weekly yoga or Pilates, is also important to me.

In 2017, my husband and I brought home our dog Mocha, a Sprocker spaniel who changed our lives in ways that neither of us could have imagined. We really became a family when she arrived. During the COVID pandemic, when the world seemed frightening and uncertain in many ways, we lived in a peaceful little bubble together at home. We worked less, spent more time in the garden and enjoyed each other’s company in ways that felt strangely calm amidst everything that was happening elsewhere. Unfortunately, our time with Mocha came to an end in March 2026 when she passed away from a heart condition that she had lived with for several years. Our loss still feels very raw, but we think and talk about her everyday, determined to keep her spirit alive.

My husband and I have also been blessed to go on all kinds of wonderful adventures together since we met over a decade ago. One of our favourite trips was to Goa in 2022, where we attended the wedding of a good friend who I first met in Singapore. The celebration lasted four days and was unlike anything either of us had ever experienced before.

From the wedding, I particularly remember a procession moving between the hotel and the beach for the marital ceremony. We barely knew anyone there, yet somehow we felt completely welcome and included.

Throughout the procession, I was entirely present. There were no thoughts about the past or worries about the future. There was just music, movement, colour, warmth and dancing, freshly smelling flowers and the sea breeze moving through the air. Everybody around us seemed totally lost in the moment, and somehow that feeling became contagious.

As I become increasingly immersed in my PhD, I can feel my passion for learning about other people and places growing, perhaps because I am focusing on a part of the world and country that is still feels new and unfamiliar. It is the greatest honour to be able to continue learning as part of my day job, even if I’m now doing so as a researcher instead of consultant.

Looking towards the future, when I think about what I would want younger women entering mining or related industries to know, I reflect on how many of us carry our own doubts, often quietly so. Doubts about whether we are experienced enough, knowledgeable enough or deserving enough to occupy space within industries which have been – and in some ways still are – male-dominated. I’ve carried such thoughts myself, having spent many years quietly questioning whether I am “enough”. We should all feel worthy of inclusion and deserving of being seen and heard exactly as we are, regardless of what stage in our career we are in.

Standing at the beginning of something new, this feels important to me now in ways I probably would not have understood ten years ago.