A View from the Edge of the Pit

I was standing at the edge of an open pit mine in the middle of the Gobi Desert wearing brand new steel-toed boots I had intentionally scuffed before anyone noticed how clean they were. My hi-vis vest didn’t fit properly, my hard hat was still too shiny, and the air was doing exactly what you would expect October air in Mongolia to do. It was freezing at night, warming just enough during the day that we could remove our coats and feel the sun while the wind moved across the steppe.

I was twenty-eight years old, more than twenty hours flight time away from Vancouver, standing next to one of the largest copper mines in the world, looking at something almost too big to comprehend. The pit stretched out in front of me, the mill was behind it, and everywhere I looked there was another piece of a process I had only ever understood through spreadsheets, inventory calculations, and financial statements.

For the first time, the numbers had a physical place to belong.

I was there with my co-worker and very good friend, Kelsey. We were two Canadian women (me with almost white blonde hair at the time), walking into spaces where we obviously stood out to the Mongolian employees. I still remember entering the cafeteria, a room that could hold hundreds of workers, and feeling like everything went quiet for just a fraction of a second. There were moments where I was very aware of being different and of how far from home we were. I felt isolated in some ways, but never afraid or unhappy. I was having fun and lucky to be doing my job with my friend. As we were riding back in a pickup truck from the mine site to camp I was thinking, “Who gets to do this?”

We each took photos with our tour operator and driver, Sanj, standing at the pit. Kelsey and I also took a selfie, which we called the “o-pelfie,” (our open-pit selfie) and laughed about it for years afterward.

Touring that mine I realized I had found the part of auditing and accounting that actually made sense to me. Mining took everything I had always loved as a kid and connected it to the career I had chosen. A mine was essentially the world’s biggest and most expensive LEGO set, and the part of me that had grown up building things and wanting to know how everything worked finally found its place.

In some ways, I always assumed I would become an accountant. Both of my parents worked in auditing at public accounting firms. They actually met while working together, and while my mom, Kerry, retired to raise me and my sister, growing up I saw my dad love what he did, and often heard my mom speak fondly of her time in audit, despite the challenges she faced being one of very few women in the field at that time. People used to call me “Mini Tim” because I was so much like my dad. We had similar personalities, and I think part of me just thought, “Well, they are accountants, they are good at it and they love it, so maybe I will too.”

I was always a math kid, although I laugh about that now because accounting is not really as much about math as people think. In fact, my basic math skills have probably gone downhill as I’ve gotten older. What I really love about my career is the problem-solving side. I like puzzles. I like rules and structure and figuring out how pieces connect. I like getting to the end of something and feeling like there is a solution.

When I was younger, I loved LEGO and K’Nex. I loved making things and understanding how things were built. How It’s Made was one of my favourite shows because I wanted to see the process behind everything. For a while, I actually thought I might become an engineer and even after I started at the University of Western Ontario, I debated switching out of accounting and into engineering.

Ultimately, I completed my degree and in 2010 started in the private company audit group at PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) in Vancouver. I knew I liked auditing but I had not quite found the thing that made me excited about it. By chance, I was lent to the mining group for an audit, and it was not long before I transferred to that team and started working full-time on mining clients.

Mining has energy. It has complexity. Sometimes it has chaos. I like understanding how a mine works and how all the pieces fit together. Moving onto the mining team gave me the connection I had been missing and I found the place where my accounting brain and my engineering curiosity could coexist.

I loved the opportunities that came with it. When one of my clients moved their head office from Vancouver to London, I travelled there with my team for weeks at a time. We worked incredibly long hours, but we were in our twenties, flying overseas, living in another city, eating meals together, exploring on weekends, and building friendships through the intensity of the experience. Those years gave me opportunities I may never be able to repeat. I travelled to places I might never have otherwise visited. I walked through mine sites and processing facilities. I saw the physical reality behind the work we were doing.

That experience still shapes how I lead today as an Audit Partner, Mining Lead, and Vancouver Regional Public Company Leader at MNP. My role has grown far beyond the technical accounting I first fell in love with. Today, I help lead teams, audit public companies, build relationships with and advise my clients, and contribute to growing MNP’s mining practice, both in Vancouver and nationally. But the foundation is the same: understanding the business, understanding the people, and understanding how all the pieces connect.

I still encourage younger professionals to “say yes and go”. Go to the client site. Go see the mine. Go count inventory. Learn what is actually happening behind the numbers. You may not realize how special those experiences are while you are living them, but one day you will look back and understand how they shaped who you have become.

I wish someone had given me this advice early in my own career. There were many opportunities I took, but also one I didn’t. A few years after my client moved to London, I was offered the chance to relocate there for two years and continue with the London team who was taking over the audit. It was an incredible opportunity and even came with a guaranteed return to Vancouver, which was unusual at my level. But I had just gotten engaged and bought my first home and was hesitant to leave Vancouver. I remember thinking, “Two years is such a long time. I don’t even know if I’ll still be working in audit in two years.” More than a decade later, I am still here. Hindsight is 20/20!

I think about that decision often. London is still one of my favourite cities, and part of me wonders what that version of my life would have looked like. But that choice also changed the way I approach opportunities now. I became a believer in not saying no too quickly. Two years feels enormous when you are standing at the beginning of it, but careers are long and time moves faster than you realize.

As I progressed in the accounting profession, my career became less about building and solving spreadsheet problems and more about solving problems with people. I still love getting into the details though. Every once in a while, if someone on my team is stuck on a complicated model or technical issue, I will jump in because part of me still loves formulas and Excel and making something work. But my role now is much more about coaching people, supporting clients, and helping teams work through challenges together.

Part of my evolution has been learning that leadership is not about proving you can (or need to) outwork everyone forever. Public accounting is demanding, and there were many times throughout my career where I pushed myself incredibly hard. Eventually I developed a different relationship with those demands. One of my rules became that “no good work happens after midnight”. There is a point where the extra hours stop being productive, and the smartest thing you can do is stop, sleep, and come back the next day to actually solve the problem.

That perspective also came with experience, because for a long time I struggled with the feeling that I had not actually earned what I achieved. I would have lots of evidence in front of me (successful projects, great client relationships, and compliments from my team and peers) and still an internal voice would question whether I was capable enough. Part of what drew me to GEMS was wanting to reflect on my own career in a way that allowed me to actually acknowledge it.

One of the key moments that helped challenge that voice came in 2018, shortly after I had become a senior manager. I was asked to speak at a financial reporting update event in front of hundreds of people. All the other speakers were partners in the firm, and I had never done a public speaking engagement to a group that large before. I had also just found out I was pregnant (although nobody at work knew yet) and I was dealing with terrible first-trimester morning sickness.

Before I walked on stage, I was in the bathroom throwing up. When I got on stage I had to look prepared and comfortable, but I knew how nervous I was. Everything went smoothly, and afterward, colleagues, attendees, and clients came up and told me how natural I looked. I remember reflecting about the difference between what we feel internally and what everyone else sees. No one else knew how nervous I was, they only saw that I was capable.

Being a woman in finance and mining – two industries that can sometimes feel like somewhat of a boys’ club - has added another layer to my career development. There is a constant balance between fitting in and staying true to yourself. There have been awkward moments, and many rooms where I was the only woman present. There have been conversations where someone noticed or commented on my appearance before considering or acknowledging my expertise. But I have always tried not to internalize those situations and focus remembering that I belong there.

My parents never raised me with the idea that because I was a girl there were limitations to the things I could do. As a girl and young woman, I played sports. I competed. I learned teamwork, failure, and resilience before I ever entered a boardroom. I never walked into any of those environments thinking I did not belong there.

Sometimes being different gives me an opening. If being the only woman in the room starts a conversation, then I have the chance to show what I know. Of course, I would love a world where there is equal representation, and no one has to think or talk about that fact. I do not want to be invited somewhere only because someone needs a woman on a panel. I want to continue seeing more women filling senior roles in the mining sector, so that we have more balanced participation, both on panels and elsewhere, reflecting the expertise of women in those roles.

Outside of work, my life changed dramatically after becoming a mother. My daughter Logan was born in April 2019, three weeks early. I was actually still working when I went into labour. I spent hours that morning on calls, handing off client updates between contractions before finally going to the hospital.

I returned from maternity leave after eight months, in January 2020, and within a week of my return to work I flew to Mongolia and spent three weeks there doing a year-end audit. We arrived back just as COVID was spreading throughout Asia and the result of the world. When the office shut down and my husband returned to work after his paternity leave ended, I suddenly found myself working from home full-time with a baby at home. My days became fragmented pieces of parenting and work. Early mornings before Logan woke up. Calls during naps. More work after her bedtime. She sat on my lap through so many meetings that my colleagues and clients all knew her.

My personal life was also changing. My marriage officially ended in late 2021, and in early 2022 I was living alone for the first time in my adult life, co-parenting a three year old, and pushing harder than ever professionally with a goal of becoming an audit partner.

I did not tell people at work what was happening in my personal life. I was trying to prove I was ready to become partner, so I said yes to everything. I worked some of the longest hours of my career while carrying more personally than most people realized. In March 2022, during a call with Swan, who managed resourcing at my firm, the version of myself that had been keeping everything separate finally let the full picture come out. She immediately stepped in, not only as a colleague but as a friend. She helped rearrange what needed to change in my workload, but more importantly, she showed up as a friend. She ultimately became and remains one of my closest friends to this day.

When I did not make partner at PwC when I expected to, I was devastated. I felt like I had given everything. I had come back early from maternity leave, worked through demanding years, taken on complex files, and pushed myself as hard as I possibly could. After some holiday time away which I used to reflect on the decision that had been made, I returned to work with a different mindset. I would keep doing excellent work, but I had to trust that the right things for me would happen at the right time.

By the summer of 2023, after months of conversations, questions, and finally taking a full personal inventory of what I wanted from the next stage of my career, I knew it was time for a change.

When I connected with MNP, it immediately felt different. The conversations focused on who I was, what I brought to the table, and where I could lead. I also had some other opportunities outside of public accounting, but choosing MNP felt like the continuation of what I had been personally working toward for years.

Around that same time, I met my current partner, Rylan. In a period filled with complicated decisions, choosing him was one that felt easy. He became a calm point during a time of transition, and I could simply be myself and be loved for who I was.

When I started putting my thoughts together for this story, something surprised me. I thought I was going to write only about mining, the ‘boys’ club’, and what it felt like navigating that world. I have plenty of those stories, but as I reflected on what I felt was important to share, those were not the moments that stayed with me. Instead, the moments that shaped my development the most were the relationships and the women who were beside me through different chapters of my career and life: Kelsey was beside me at the edge of a mine pit in Mongolia, Swan showed up for me during one of the hardest periods of my life, and my now fellow MNP partner Carlyn opened a door that helped me find the next step in my career.

When I started this story, I expected that it would end today, not back in 2023. I thought I needed to explain all the things I have been proud to work on and accomplish with my partners and team members at MNP. In the end it felt unnecessary because it turns out the story is not about where I am now. It is about my experiences at the mine site in Mongolia, the spreadsheets and the LEGO pieces, the women who have guided me, and my daughter on my lap during client calls, and it’s about learning when to push, when to change, and when to trust that I had already done enough.

The next chapter of my story is still being written, and I'm enjoying flipping through each page as it comes. Some part of me is probably still standing at the edge of that pit in Mongolia, looking out over something impossibly large and wondering how it all works.