Laurie Reemeyer, MBA 10 – Mining For Inclusivity

(Transcripts may contain a few typographical errors due to audio quality during the podcast recording.)

[00:00:09] Sean Li: This episode of OneHaas is brought to you by the Haas Fund, fueling opportunities for our students, faculty, and strengthening our Haas community.

Join us in making an impact today at haas.berkeley.edu/give.

Welcome to the OneHaas Alumni Podcast. I’m your host, Sean Li. And today, we’re joined by Laurie Reemeyer. Laurie is from the full-time MBA program class of 2010. Laurie is the principal consultant at Resourceful Paths, a Canadian consultancy that is helping you mine responsibly. He was also very involved with Q@Haas when he was a student and is hoping to build out a space for the LGBTQ+ alumni community within the Haas Alumni Network.

Welcome to the podcast.

[00:00:58] Laurie Reemeyer: Thanks very much, Sean. Good to be here.

[00:01:00] Sean Li: It’s a pleasure having you. And one of the things we love to start the conversation with is hearing your origin story. Love to hear where you’re born, how you grew up, and if you’d like to share, you know, your parents.

[00:01:14] Laurie Reemeyer: Absolutely. Thanks Sean. So, I was born in the Netherlands and actually born to an Arabic father who was estranged when I was one. So, my mother met my stepfather, who I refer to as my father, in the Netherlands. And he had lived in Australia and decided there was a better life for us there. So, we moved to Australia when I was four. We settled in Brisbane, which is the Olympic City in 2032. And I was educated there. I went to university and did my engineering degree. And then subsequently went out to the Outback for work. When I was growing up, and at school, I always was committed to being an engineer.

My grandfather on my mother’s side had been an engineer. And I decided to go into the mining industry because partly a sense of adventure, partly because, at that point, my father was pretty strict, and I was questioning a whole bunch of things about myself, and I actually needed a bit of separation.

So, going to the Outback and working in mines are both something that was quite hands on that I felt was exciting and meaningful and different while also creating some space for my parents seemed to be a good mix. And living in the Outback was, kind of, like Arizona, if you’d like. It’s dry. It’s rocky.

It’s a little dusty. At that point in my life, it was quite exciting, but also there was a part which was confusing because my sexuality was something that emerged a bit at boarding school. I went to an all-boys boarding school. And I had these weird feelings about men. And it didn’t feel quite appropriate.

It didn’t feel quite right. I was questioning for many years. And then living in the Outback, that was not somewhere where gay culture really was expressed in any way whatsoever and certainly not something I talked about. But having grown up with a very strict and homophobic father, I also knew that was something that I was facing a lot of tension about-

[00:03:07] Sean Li: Right.

[00:03:07] Laurie Reemeyer: … a lot of internal moral conflicts. And that was happening in parallel with me trying to do the best job I could as a young engineer. I’d graduated at the top of my class for mineral process engineering. And it was something I was committed to. And that was a very important part of my life. And the sexuality piece was something I just didn’t know how to deal with.

And in fact, I went many years of trying with women, a couple of years trying with women. And I actually only really, I guess, explored my sexuality fully in my later 20s. And I think, at that time, living in Outback towns, going to Sydney to explore the other side of me, coming back to the mining towns and suppressing myself and trying to focus on work, that was a balance that I really had to live with for a number of years.

[00:03:57] Sean Li: Thank you so much for sharing that story. You know, you talked a little bit about going to Sydney, right-

[00:04:03] Laurie Reemeyer: Yes.

[00:04:03] Sean Li: … while you’re out in the Outback. And I’m really curious to hear, what was the environment or the atmosphere like for you? Like, in terms of Australia as a country, actually, I’m not familiar with it at all because the sentiment towards LGBTQ in the U.S. has, I feel like, dramatically shifted in the past decade or so, right? What was it like growing up in Australia? Because I know, in some other countries, there’s certain countries that are a lot more open-minded and some are a lot more closed-minded. And really curious to hear what Australia was like.

[00:04:32] Laurie Reemeyer: So, we’re talking really around the year 2000. This is the time when I, sort of, resolved with myself after some internal battles that, yes, I was gay, and I needed to accept that and explore that part of my life. And Sydney was always the epicenter of gay life in Australia. It’s the home of the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras, which is a huge event, that happens around March every year. I’d seen that on television. We heard about, like, we had things like Priscilla, Queen of the Desert and other iconic films and characters coming out of Sydney.

[00:05:07] Sean Li: Yeah.

[00:05:07] Laurie Reemeyer: And I’d been to Sydney before. It’s a beautiful place geographically sitting on the harbor and so forth. But at that point in my life, I was living in a small town called Cobar, which is in Central New South Wales. It was about an eight-hour drive from Sydney.

And I would go to Sydney regularly because that was my escape from this town of 5,000 people where I didn’t know any gay people, where, you know, life was pretty… How do I say it? Life was pretty straight, right? Like, the people, the epicenter of life was basically married people with kids who would go for a beer at the Occidental Hotel every Friday and Saturday night. That was it. And I needed to get away from that.

[00:05:47] Sean Li: Right.

[00:05:47] Laurie Reemeyer: And so, I’d drive down to Sydney. And I just remember the excitement. Driving down the highway, you come off the escarpment, like, the Blue Mountains. You drive into Western Sydney on the freeway, and then it’s like the bright lights, and then you get into the gay region, which is a place called Darlinghurst and Oxford Street.

And it was just a whole new world, right? So, in that respect, even back in 2000, there were pockets within the big cities, particularly in Sydney and to some extent Melbourne, that were extremely gay-friendly, but in particular Sydney. And so, I found this whole new culture of people. I actually connected with the brother of a really good friend who, kind of, showed me the ropes a little bit, where to go, some of the places. And then I found the community-

[00:06:32] Sean Li: Yeah.

[00:06:32] Laurie Reemeyer: … but it was very separate, like, coming into Sydney and experiencing that and then going back to the outback where I would suppress everything. And in fact, in the year 2000, I went to the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras. And when I came back to the mine site, the town, people asked me, “How was your weekend?” or whatever, and, “Where did you go?” And I said, “Oh, I went to Sydney and Newcastle.” Newcastle is a regional city up North. And the Newcastle bit was more of, kind of, a distraction so that people wouldn’t think I was just going to Sydney for the Mardi Gras-

[00:07:03] Sean Li: Yeah.

[00:07:03] Laurie Reemeyer: … but I was. And at that time, like, people would ask me, some people would just be hostile and say, “Oh, you’re gay.” And they’d call me the F-word, the gay F-word. And other people were trying and be supportive. I remember this one, this fitter, this mechanical fitter. He was asking me, “Oh, were you there to support a friend?” And I just froze. And I just said, “I didn’t go.” And I’m a terrible liar so he probably knew I was lying. And then for other people, I was ambiguous, and I just didn’t know what to say.

[00:07:30] Sean Li: Yeah.

[00:07:30] Laurie Reemeyer: And I think that’s the tension at that point in your life when you’re dealing with communities that are essentially either ranging from ambivalent to suspicious to outwardly hostile about gay people. It can be difficult. And I remember a few months after I’d been to Sydney and there was all this, sort of, innuendo and rumor, you know, snickering that would happen. A few months later, I was heading to Europe for a study trip.

And before I left, there was this tall plumber. We’ll call him Joe the plumber. And Joe the plumber decided to come into my office and started screaming about how I was disgusting and was I going to have a big gay fest in Europe or whatever, you know. So, he decided to take it upon himself to make a moral crusade about my alleged sexuality. And it was pretty intimidating actually.

I mean, he was a big guy. I didn’t really know what to say. I just remember shouting at him, “I’m going for a study trip,” and I just didn’t really know what else to say, but it was actually quite awful. And I didn’t talk to my manager about it. I mean, people in the corridor clearly would have heard because the shouting was quite loud, but I think, at that time, like, I really didn’t know what to say. And I think I don’t know if that could have escalated to physical violence, but I think it could have. He was pretty heated.

Like, his face was all red and he was shouting. And I don’t know what was going on for him, I don’t know what his story was, but I know that, for me, that was a pretty hostile experience. And I transferred away from that site not too long after and went into fly-in, fly-out work. And fly-in, fly-out work was, in some ways, a bit easier because you’d have your life in a regional city on the coast, and then you’d fly to work, and you’d do your work. We were on a combination of rosters, but generally I’d work weekdays at the mine site. I’d fly home for the weekends. And then you’d have your own life. You didn’t have to talk about stuff.

[00:09:27] Sean Li: Right.

[00:09:28] Laurie Reemeyer: But there would always be this thing around suppression, around what do you say and what do you not say. When people ask about your weekend, how do you just, sort of, water it down and disguise it? When I found a boyfriend, I met a boyfriend, Gary, who’s lovely. We’re not together anymore, but he was my first true love.

[00:09:47] Sean Li: Yeah.

[00:09:47] Laurie Reemeyer: I was talking to him just the other day actually. He lived in Hawaii. And we met at the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras in 2003. And Gary gave me a ring at one point. It was quite fancy. And I remember wearing it when I was in Townsville in the city when I was not at work.

[00:10:02] Sean Li: Yeah.

[00:10:03] Laurie Reemeyer: And occasionally, we’d have work functions, work meetings. And I’d be here with this big gold ring that was engraved with my name. And people would, kind of, look… you know. I think they wanted to ask. I never talked about it, but Gary would, at times, like, he’d be at the airport on Monday mornings getting ready to fly back to Hawaii and I’m getting ready to fly to the mine site. And I was always a little uncomfortable about, well, they’ve seen me with Gary. What do they think is going on, you know?

[00:10:29] Sean Li: Yeah.

[00:10:29] Laurie Reemeyer: And I’d try and embrace him and not be too public in my display of emotions at the airport where all the mine workers are waiting to catch the plane. And it’s a challenging experience to think about how am I supposed to act in certain forums where we are not accepted? And I think, in Australia, things have shifted certainly with the adoption of marriage equality some years ago. I think that was a really big moment for Australia, but there was a significant proportion of Australians that were not comfortable with marriage equality, especially out of some of the immigrant communities.

[00:11:02] Sean Li: Right.

[00:11:02] Laurie Reemeyer: And I think that’s one thing I always find when we talk about diversity and we talk about allyship. We can’t assume that people in various marginalized groups all support each other. Sometimes, there is alignment. Sometimes, there’s not. Sometimes, there’s outward hostility. And that was one thing that reminded me in terms of marriage equality is there are communities that are not comfortable with gay people. And part of that may be because they don’t really understand what a gay person is-

[00:11:31] Sean Li: Right.

[00:11:31] Laurie Reemeyer: … or they can’t see the gay people who are in their lives. So, I think with Australia, by the time that I left, things were changing. I was safe in the cities. I was feeling safe in fly in, fly out. I was not feeling safe at all to come out at work. And really, that’s where Berkeley was a fundamental change in my life because when I came to Berkeley, I just came out first day I was there.

[00:11:54] Sean Li: Right.

[00:11:54] Laurie Reemeyer: And that was such a liberating experience compared to that feeling of suppression and separation that I felt in the mining industry in Australia.

[00:12:03] Sean Li: Yeah. No, thank you so much for sharing that. I have a personal question, might be a tough question, and I’m just curious, so the Joe the plumber situation-

[00:12:13] Laurie Reemeyer: Yeah.

[00:12:13] Sean Li: … if you were to give your younger self advice, how do you think you would have handled that differently, if at all?

[00:12:20] Laurie Reemeyer: Yeah. I don’t think I was ready to handle that differently at the time, to be honest.

[00:12:25] Sean Li: Right.

[00:12:25] Laurie Reemeyer: I really don’t. I’d set myself a trap. I’d chosen to hide. I’d chosen to deny. If I maybe rewind a little bit and talk about the fitter who asked me was I there to support a friend? I think I could and should have answered that question differently. And in a way, if I’d just said yes, I would have actually been telling the truth-

[00:12:48] Sean Li: Right.

[00:12:49] Laurie Reemeyer: … because I was there to support a friend. It just happened to be my first boyfriend.

[00:12:52] Sean Li: Right.

[00:12:52] Laurie Reemeyer: And he’s someone who is actually trying to reach out and be supportive.

[00:12:58] Sean Li: Right.

[00:12:58] Laurie Reemeyer: Like, this is a gruff fitter with a big beard, and I can’t remember his name, but he was a good guy. And he was trying to be supportive. And I just shut it down and ran away, which was, in my opinion, actually, kind of, lame. So, I think, that, I could have handled differently.

And if I’d have handled that differently and not tried to, sort of, deny or be ambiguous about whether I went or not, that might have changed the way I could have shown up for the Joe the plumber situation because, at that point, I hadn’t, sort of, put myself on the shifting sands of being dishonest because I think there’s a difference between not disclosing everything, you don’t have to go into the gritty details, versus outright lying.

And so, when I’m saying to some people I didn’t go to the Mardi Gras, to other people some ambiguous statement about maybe I was there or maybe I wasn’t, I was putting myself in a weak and, you know, in an uncomfortable position for myself. It’s like I’m just lying to myself and lying to other people. It’s not very good. So, my younger self, I would have just been more upfront to the fitter and said, yeah, I was there to support a friend. And it was-

[00:14:05] Sean Li: Yeah.

[00:14:05] Laurie Reemeyer: … an interesting and different experience, stuff I had never seen before, you know.

[00:14:10] Sean Li: Yeah.

[00:14:10] Laurie Reemeyer: But Joe the plumber, I think, that was a physically vulnerable situation. I’m sitting in my office with a big guy standing over me, looking like he’s ready to punch me. And I don’t think I was prepared for that. What I would probably say is that my younger self should have talked to my manager about the situation because I think that sort of harassment is not okay.

[00:14:35] Sean Li: Right.

[00:14:36] Laurie Reemeyer: And to just, sort of, just let it go and not say anything was a mistake, right? And sometimes, I think we do that because we don’t want to make it a bigger deal, we don’t want to have the conversation about our sexuality, et cetera-

[00:14:50] Sean Li: Right.

[00:14:50] Laurie Reemeyer: … but the reality in the mining industry is that people, women for example, are facing harassment, intimidation all the time. Gay people, indigenous people-

[00:14:59] Sean Li: Right.

[00:14:59] Laurie Reemeyer: … various vulnerable groups, they’re facing that all the time. And if we don’t talk about what’s going on there, you know, that’s actually a problem.

[00:15:07] Sean Li: Right.

[00:15:07] Laurie Reemeyer: Now, the challenge is, you know, would Joe the plumber have got into trouble? Like, I didn’t want to get him into trouble. I just wanted him to frankly calm down-

[00:15:15] Sean Li: Yeah.

[00:15:15] Laurie Reemeyer: … and be able to manage himself a little bit better because what he was, sort of, shouting and screaming, that was not healthy. Like, he was not in a good place.

[00:15:22] Sean Li: Yeah.

[00:15:22] Laurie Reemeyer: And I have some compassion for that because that was how my father was when he used to get, like, in big temper tantrums and stuff like that. Like, my father was-

[00:15:30] Sean Li: Right.

[00:15:30] Laurie Reemeyer: … exactly like Joe the plumber. So, yeah. So, that was a scary situation, but I could have done some different things both before and after that would have put me in a better position as well, I think.

[00:15:43] Sean Li: I think that’s fantastic advice. And just to give you some context why I was wanting to ask that question, it was just in case there’s, like, a younger alumni, right-

[00:15:52] Laurie Reemeyer: Yeah.

[00:15:52] Sean Li: … and especially coming out of undergrad hearing this, and I’m sure they’d be curious. Just to hear some perspective, I think, might be important. But allyship, I think, definitely, right, finding allies, and like you said, being open and transparent with allies and speaking out. I think these are both really critical, really important points. So, thanks for sharing that.

[00:16:13] Laurie Reemeyer: Yeah.

[00:16:13] Sean Li: So, that’s a perfect segue that brings us to Berkeley. You just mentioned Berkeley. What brought you to the States? Why Berkeley? Why MBA for that matter?

[00:16:24] Laurie Reemeyer: So, the truth of the story, it’s a little bit silly, but I met a guy in Los Angeles in 2005, and had a little whirlwind romance. It was exciting. And there was part of me that, sort of, said, “Well, I’m going to find a way to be with this guy,” and then it was like, “Oh, maybe I should do an MBA at UCLA.”

[00:16:46] Sean Li: I love it.

[00:16:46] Laurie Reemeyer: And it was a little ridiculous. I thought, in hindsight, it was a little ridiculous. And I started looking into it. And so, actually, this is a really good idea.

[00:16:54] Sean Li: Yeah.

[00:16:54] Laurie Reemeyer: And then I was looking at Kellogg in Chicago. And then I was looking at Berkeley. And I still had UCLA on the list. And then the romance, sort of, faded away, ended up just focusing my search on two schools, which was Kellogg and Berkeley-

[00:17:07] Sean Li: Right.

[00:17:07] Laurie Reemeyer: … and having done a little bit more homework. And then part of this was around exploring other parts of me. Part of it was around transitioning and thinking more about how I was going to work in more sustainability-related things, the excitement of coming to America, all of that stuff. I went on a couple of trips to check out both Berkeley and Kellogg in 2006 and 2007.

And each time I went, because I went to both schools twice, each time I went, I really enjoyed the experience. Unfortunately, my application to Kellogg was pretty crap. And I didn’t get into Kellogg. And in a lot of ways, I think there was a silver lining. My Berkeley application was later and much better, and I think a better fit for me as well overall, not just weather-wise, but I think, institutionally, I think-

[00:17:55] Sean Li: Right.

[00:17:55] Laurie Reemeyer: … Berkeley was the right place for me. And I think that, sort of, journey of understanding why would I want to do an MBA, it wasn’t really for the money. I was earning a lot of money in the mining industry in Australia, but there was a piece of me that was feeling unsatisfied. One, there was the question of my sexuality and so forth.

Two, there’s the issue of being in Australia, which is physically very isolated and somewhat insular from the rest of the world, and just a need to, sort of, grow beyond what I was doing. So, I felt the MBA was just a good steppingstone to break free of the mining industry constraints. Having said that, I went back into the mining industry. We’ll cover more of that maybe later.

But I think coming to Berkeley and the journey to going through my application, the support that I got from a couple of my bosses with the application, especially the late Jim Black. He passed away a few years ago now, but Jim had been to lots of places. He’d been to Russia where he’d worked in the oil and gas industry. He’d worked in mining. He was pretty pragmatic.

And he would travel with me to North America when I was doing a project in Canada or I would come to Vancouver periodically with Jim. And we’d talk about various things. And he gave me some good solid practical advice about my application and what I wanted. And that was very useful.

And I got into the third round. And I was informed on the 30th of April 2008 that I got into Berkeley. I was in Vancouver in a meeting with my project. And I said to him, “Look, I’m waiting. It’s the last day of admissions notifications that I’m waiting. And if I get the call from Berkeley, I need to go and take the call.”

[00:19:41] Sean Li: Yeah.

[00:19:41] Laurie Reemeyer: And we’re in this meeting. And I’m, kind of, keeping myself occupied and staying engaged in the meeting. And then the call came. And it was from Corinne Kang. And I said, “Oh, it’s Berkeley. I need to go.” And I went to an office down the corridor. And Corinne congratulated me and told me that I was accepted and that they really liked my leadership experiences because I’d had a few interesting leadership experiences in the Outback. And it was wonderful. And I came back and told my colleagues. And they all cheered. And then I said, “Oh, look, I need to divert so that I can go to Days at Haas on the weekend.” And I made the arrangements.

And it all worked out. And I remember coming to Berkeley after my acceptance. I’d been, like, several times, in the preceding months, going to all the information sessions and just trying to get up to speed on what was going on at school and all that. And I was desperate. Like, I was down to one school strategy, right? And I was desperate to get in. But coming back as an admit, early morning Days at Haas, walking up to campus from the BART station early foggy morning. Like, you know, Days at Haas was wonderful. I met some-

[00:20:52] Sean Li: Yeah.

[00:20:52] Laurie Reemeyer: … classmates and all that. But I’d resolved at that point that this was going to be a new a new leaf of my life, right? My father had passed away in 2007. And that was difficult. I loved my father, but there was a lot of conflict, right? And I had talked, at some point, with my mother about, well, should I disclose my sexuality? I told her a few years earlier, and she said, “No, don’t ever do it. He’ll kill you.” And I know that was actually a credible statement, which is just hard, right? It’s hard to-

[00:21:21] Sean Li: Yeah.

[00:21:21] Laurie Reemeyer: … think about that, but it’s also the reality. So, in a way, my father’s passing and then going to Berkeley was, like, a bit of a rebirth for me in a way. And yes, I was just jubilant. And then coming to Berkeley later on, a few months later in, it was the start of August 2008, and yeah, I just dove in, and it was great.

[00:21:42] Sean Li: That’s wonderful. Thank you for sharing that story into Berkeley. I think that’s the most detailed story into Berkeley that we’ve had on this podcast.

[00:21:52] Laurie Reemeyer: Yeah. Fair enough. Yeah.

[00:21:52] Sean Li: No, in a very wonderful way.

[00:21:55] Laurie Reemeyer: Yeah. Good.

[00:21:56] Sean Li: And I love good stories. I actually been dying to hear, you know, what it is that you actually do as a processing engineer or process engineer?

[00:22:04] Laurie Reemeyer: Yeah. I’m a minerals process engineer.

[00:22:06] Sean Li: Yeah. What is that? I mean, it sounds, you know, on the surface, like, I can make sense of it, but what is it exactly that you do now?

[00:22:13] Laurie Reemeyer: Yeah. So, when I started, when I graduated from undergrad, that was the degree in mineral process engineering, and that’s really about the extraction of minerals and metals from ores. So, you got rock that’s in the ground that has particular metals in it, for example, like, copper or gold or zinc. And we design processes to take that rock and extract the metal components out of it into saleable products. And so, when I went to Mount Isa, for example, this mining town in the Outback, it was a copper, zinc, lead, and silver-producing complex. There was multiple mines.

[00:22:51] Sean Li: Right.

[00:22:51] Laurie Reemeyer: And they had two processing streams. I worked in the copper concentrator. And I was in a research type of role helping the copper concentrator to improve their copper recovery and their product quality and reduce their costs. And what happens in that process is that the ore came from underground is ground up in these gigantic tumbling mills that draw the power of many thousands of houses. So, we would have mills that would draw something around, like, six megawatts of power-

[00:23:20] Sean Li: Wow.

[00:23:20] Laurie Reemeyer: … each. And they would produce essentially a ground-up slurry of, like, sand, silt type of material mixed with water, where you’d add some chemicals and then you’d basically stir that up and you’d inject air, and you would basically set the chemical condition so that the copper-bearing minerals float in this mineralized broth.

And then I recover it into an intermediate copper concentrate, which contains something like 25% copper, and then that’s pumped up to the smelter where it’s smelted and refined at high temperatures into copper metal. So, I did that for a number of years. I worked up and up through to operations management, which really focuses primarily on safety. That’s the big thing when you’re an operations manager. How do we make sure we don’t hurt people?

And we had a very good safety culture at Century. I think that’s where I learned a lot about safety and about how you encourage people to really bring the values of safety and wellbeing and caring about themselves and their colleagues. That’s really where that was instilled because the mining industry, in the past, has been one where a lot of people have got hurt physically, where-

[00:24:30] Sean Li: Right.

[00:24:30] Laurie Reemeyer: … you know, we haven’t necessarily designed machinery and equipment, et cetera, to keep people safe, where people get engulfed underground when there’s ground control incidents and so forth. A lot of that has developed over the years. And it’s actually now a relatively safe industry and one where safety is valued-

[00:24:48] Sean Li: Yeah.

[00:24:48] Laurie Reemeyer: … but what was missing in that a lot was around psychological safety, particularly for groups like myself where that was not really… it was a bit of a blind spot, I think, for the industry, but overall, that’s changing now. So, I did that, sort of, for 13 years in operations.

And then I worked in a corporate role, which was more about assessing different assets in different parts of the world. And that’s where I started focusing on Canada and evaluating different copper and nickel, zinc mines in different parts of the world and what would be the business case, so looking at some of the financial metrics associated with investments and taking over certain types of companies or assets, et cetera. And I left Australia in 2008.

At that time, I’d been in the corporate role for two years. After Haas, what I do now, I did some time in an engineering company where I was operating as a study manager. So, that was looking at studies of mining development projects, looking at all different engineering disciplines, other disciplines, and putting together reports and financial models and estimates, et cetera, to justify whether a project would proceed or not.

So, I did that for a few years with a company called AMEC. I was then the process engineering manager for a while, but I told AMEC that I really wanted to get into environmental consulting, which is what I wrote in my essays for Haas, right, that I wanted to transition to environmental consulting.

[00:26:12] Sean Li: Yeah.

[00:26:12] Laurie Reemeyer: So, I wasn’t really getting what I wanted out of the engineering company. And I engineered an exit in 2016 and started my own business, Resourceful Paths. And the prime focus on that was around sustainability in mining. So, when we talk about helping you mine responsibly, what I’m really talking about is how do we do things in ways that minimize environmental impact, that are more socially acceptable?

How do we incorporate practices that reduce energy use, water use, that reduce footprint, those type of things? So, these days, I still do some mineral process engineering, but I also do more specific sustainability-related consulting for the mining sector. And I decided to go back into mining partly because of leverage, because they need help, and I’ve got experience in that area, and partly because that experience at Berkeley coming out, being out, and resolving that I would be out post-MBA, it, kind of, removed one of the main barriers for why it didn’t want to be in mining.

And what I’ve discovered in doing that is, actually, people in the LGBTQ+ community are present in mining in all sorts of places. More so probably they’re more out in consulting companies than they are in mining operations. There is still some hostility there, but I’ve been in various forums where I’ve come out and people have come out back to me. Some of them are hidden.

Like, I was profiled in the Canadian Institute for Mining, Metallurgy and Petroleum in one of their magazine publications a couple of years ago. And it was talking about my journey and coming out and so forth and being out in mining. And I had a colleague who is well into his 70s who has been with his male partner for 30 years and hasn’t told a soul in mining. And he came out to me and said how much he liked the article and how he was terrified to come out, but, you know, that, that article gave him some comfort-

[00:28:10] Sean Li: Right.

[00:28:10] Laurie Reemeyer: … which was good. Of course, I can’t disclose who this person is, but in a way, it made me feel sad, but it also made me feel good and, how do I say, grateful that me sharing my story was helpful for someone like him. We had a panel discussion two years ago in Montreal at the CIM convention there. It was a panel for LGBTQ+ professionals in mining. And it went really well. I had a diverse range of panelists. Great people. Got a little emotional, but-

[00:28:40] Sean Li: That’s awesome.

[00:28:40] Laurie Reemeyer: … at the end, there were two trans people in the audience who came out and talked about their various experiences-

[00:28:46] Sean Li: Yeah.

[00:28:46] Laurie Reemeyer: … different experiences, but, I mean, I never expected that. And, like, the room was, kind of, silent when we were having those conversations, but people were-

[00:28:56] Sean Li: Yeah.

[00:28:56] Laurie Reemeyer: … really thinking about what was going on. And I think there is a certain power in terms of speaking up about yourself and living your life authentically and speaking authentically about your experience that encourages other people to do the same and to share things they might not otherwise share in those forums. So, one of those trans people was not necessarily hiding or anything like that.

They were just going under the radar, very quietly spoken person, but sharing that in that room, I think, made it a lot more real. Yeah. Trans people are here. And with the erasure that’s going on in the United States, the very overt erasure that’s going on, it’s very important that there are forums where people like this person, this trans person, can basically show up and say, “I exist.”

[00:29:44] Sean Li: Yeah.

[00:29:43] Laurie Reemeyer: “And I’m comfortable with myself. And I’m living my life authentically.” So, honestly, it was a great honor to have that experience and to be part of that. And I think, coming out, going back into mining has given me a lot more leverage in a way than I could have gotten if I had changed sectors. So, I’m glad I did that.

[00:30:02] Sean Li: Actually, one of the follow-up questions I had was, kind of, related to this is, over the past, I guess, 20-plus years now, do you feel like much has changed in terms of how, you know, the industry treats LGBTQ+ individuals?

[00:30:18] Laurie Reemeyer: I think quite a bit has changed. I think there’s a higher degree of respect now. So, firstly, mining companies had started publicly profiling and supporting LGBTQ+ rights. You had big companies like Alcoa, BHP, Vale, Rio Tinto, that were profiling people on LinkedIn, for example, and celebrating that there are gay people in the workforce.

And in addition, Rio Tinto, which is one of the largest mining companies in the world, it’s started in Australia, but it’s global, it put out a report called Everyday Respect, which was a major survey of its workforce, looking at issues around gender, sexuality, racialized minorities, et cetera, indigenous folks. And the results on that were pretty jarring. Like, there are high frequencies of harassment, significant harassment, of women.

And then that, sort of, compounds with people in the… it’s like sexual minorities, indigenous people. So, if you’re, for example, a queer indigenous woman, your chance of getting harassed in the mining industry is extreme. It’s just not safe, to be honest, in a lot of mining locations. So, that was a bit of a wake-up call. In one respect, I think it showed the company was more serious about exposing and addressing these types of issues. It also shows there’s a lot more work to do.

[00:31:46] Sean Li: Right.

[00:31:46] Laurie Reemeyer: I think, in general, though, I mean, I think the industry has changed. I think society has changed. Now, in the United States, there’s a bit of a rollback that’s very actively going on. And I think, now, we’re probably seeing in the corporate side who’s actually real and into it? Who actually cares about inclusivity and who doesn’t?

[00:32:05] Sean Li: Right.

[00:32:05] Laurie Reemeyer: And who just, sort of, falls into line with the power structure?

[00:32:10] Sean Li: Can you share a little bit more about your involvement with Haas, the Haas alumni community, and how you’re hoping to help build out a space for the LGBTQ+ alumni community?

[00:32:21] Laurie Reemeyer: Yeah, absolutely. So, look, when I came to Hass, obviously, I came with a degree of enthusiasm and excitement and love. And that love has not died. So, I love Berkeley Hass. I have showed up regularly since graduating 15 years ago. I was just at the 15-year reunion. I was a bit apprehensive, to be honest, coming into the United States, quite tense about it actually, but I think I was treated politely at the border and got through and met a bunch of friends and diverse communities. A number of people, from staff, leader, was there-

[00:32:53] Sean Li: Yeah.

[00:32:53] Laurie Reemeyer: … Chief Diversity Officer. And we had a good hug and talked about some stuff. And I think the curation of that event was really well done. So, it gave me hope that there’s still a lot of people in our school, in California, et cetera, who, despite what’s going on at the federal level, are carrying on-

[00:33:12] Sean Li: Yeah.

[00:33:12] Laurie Reemeyer: … in terms of particularly issues around diversity, equity, and inclusion around the learning mission of the school. So, at this point, I intend to keep coming to Haas, perhaps coming to the United States, a little less frequently than I used to. I think in terms of the Q@Haas group and affinity groups generally, one thing that’s come up, I think, in the 15 years is that it’s quite a difficult transition from when you are part of a student affinity group while on campus to how that looks as alumni.

As an alumni, you often have some insights to share, you’ve got some lived experiences that are going to be valuable to the student body, but it’s not quite clear how do we do that in a way that respects the primary goal of students, which is experiential while you’re on campus. So, it’s not a Q@Haas for alumni. It’s a student group for the students that are there. And then as we transition to alumni, it’s a question of how can we continue to support the student groups as they turn over.

[00:34:10] Sean Li: Right.

[00:34:10] Laurie Reemeyer: And at times, I’ve been invited back. I was invited back last October to be on a panel for alumni. And it was great. We met some interesting people from a range of years, some early out, some longer out than me. And really interesting insights and I think well-received by the students that showed up. And that was great.

I think that has been, however, fairly ad hoc. And there’s certainly been minimal opportunities for alumni to engage. There is a LinkedIn group that’s not very active, but I’ve been talking with staff at Berkeley Haas over the years about what can we do, how can we get alumni a little bit more engaged, how can the pool of alumni be expanded, and how can the students perhaps tap into the alumni group in a more efficient manner when and where they need them because I think our job as alumni in this case-

[00:34:59] Sean Li: Right.

[00:34:59] Laurie Reemeyer: … is to show up when we’re needed and to contribute positively to that student experience. So far, for me, it’s been more like when I show up just to let people know that I’m there to be flexible and adaptable and so forth. I don’t know where this future-

[00:35:15] Sean Li: Yeah.

[00:35:15] Laurie Reemeyer: … Q@Haas Alumni Affinity Group is going to go, but I know that we’re going to try and learn from some of the other groups. Like, there’s one alumni group from the Latinx community that’s been recently started, which, I think, is a bit of a role model. And I know that some of the staff-

[00:35:30] Sean Li: Yeah.

[00:35:30] Laurie Reemeyer: … are keen to try and make something happen, so really watch this space. If people are getting ready for pride and all that sort of stuff and want to get involved in Q@Haas for alumni or that transition from students to alumni, happy to talk because I think one thing with Q@Haas that I’d say now, more than when I was at grad school, there’s a greater focus on allyship now. There’s a greater diversity as well in the student body generally that I can see when I go back to Haas.

[00:35:58] Sean Li: Right.

[00:35:58] Laurie Reemeyer: And so, I think there’s different experiences and there’s something even for alumni to gain. Like, when I come back to Haas, when I met the president of Q@Haas this trip for reunion, just talking about what’s going on, like, I mean, that’s an enriching experience for me because I can see that the school has been developing in ways that it hadn’t, sort of, got there when I was there.

[00:36:17] Sean Li: Yeah.

[00:36:17] Laurie Reemeyer: Remembering that 2008 was the time of Prop 8 when marriage equality in California was rejected, right? So, things have moved on. In a lot of ways-

[00:36:25] Sean Li: Yeah.

[00:36:25] Laurie Reemeyer: … things in the United States have progressed a lot. And now, we’re in this state of rollback. And I think that’s-

[00:36:31] Sean Li: Yeah.

[00:36:31] Laurie Reemeyer: … particularly a time where alumni want to be there to provide support. We don’t necessarily know how, we don’t necessarily know where we’re needed, but I think it was very clear, when I went down for reunion, that there are groups, diverse groups, that are under imminent threat, that are living-

[00:36:47] Sean Li: Yeah.

[00:36:47] Laurie Reemeyer: … in fear, that are being specifically targeted, whether by erasure or by deportation or whatever it might be. Like, there’s a hostile environment out there now. And we can, sort of, try and, sort of, rationalize how real that is or whatever, you know. It’s just trying to make examples of pockets of people to suppress free speech or whatever it might be.

Like, when I go down there and I talk to some people in the United States, like, I think we should be clear that there are a lot of threats for various marginalized groups, including those in the LGBTQ+ community, especially trans people, but others as well. And I think it’s our job as an alumni to meet that moment in ways that we can to support the student body.

[00:37:31] Sean Li: No, thank you for sharing that. Yeah, absolutely. Laurie, was there anything else that you wanted to share that I didn’t get a chance to ask?

[00:37:39] Laurie Reemeyer: I think we’ve touched on a lot of stuff, but I probably wanted to, sort of, maybe summarize a few things that really, sort of, struck me as I was preparing for this podcast and as we’ve been talking today. So, one theme around living authentically, which, I think, maybe is thrown around a little bit loosely now, but I think really embodying that, living authentically, being your full self to whatever extent you can, and recognizing that, in the LGBTQ+ community, that’s really primarily the journey of coming out, and that’s something that people have to do at their own pace. It’s a unique journey for everyone. And we can’t necessarily live authentically completely straightaway because there may be issues around physical danger, around social pressures-

[00:38:22] Sean Li: Right.

[00:38:22] Laurie Reemeyer: … cultural issues, et cetera, which you’ve got to navigate through, but that’s very important that people feel that they can be themselves, be their true selves to the largest extent they can. Certainly, places like Berkeley, I think there’s opportunities for that. And the other thing that, sort of, came out was really about how we show up for communities.

Particularly, when we talk about allyship, how do I want people to show up for my community? If someone’s, like, a straight guy or a straight woman but is an ally or trying to be an ally for my community, how do we want them to show up? And I think part of that is, of course, being informed, getting yourself informed to some extent. Part of that is knowing when you are, if you’d like, a guest in a different community space versus where you are, sort of, more embedded. Like, as an ally, you don’t have a lived experience that someone else does. However, you can-

[00:39:11] Sean Li: Right.

[00:39:11] Laurie Reemeyer: … learn, you can empathize. There’s ways you can connect with communities that provide support. And I know that when I show up for other communities, immigrant communities, different racial groups, women, there are aspects of being a gay man that help me to better understand what’s going on in those communities and to thinking about how I show up, but I think, for all of us, recognizing that there are certain things about us or our groups that we represent that may trigger certain things. There may be some discomfort in those places. We might have discomfort showing up in those places. And that’s something we’ve got to work through. But, you know-

[00:39:46] Sean Li: Yeah.

[00:39:46] Laurie Reemeyer: … to be fair, I mean, if we show up in certain communities, especially ones that are under threat now, there may be a whole question around safety. And-

[00:39:54] Sean Li: Right.

[00:39:54] Laurie Reemeyer: … firstly, are we showing up authentically? Is it about supporting the community or is it about ourselves? So, if we’re showing up because we just want to feel good about ourselves. Well, sorry, it’s not enough. It’s not okay, actually. I think allyship-

[00:40:08] Sean Li: Yeah.

[00:40:08] Laurie Reemeyer: … has to be something much deeper. And I think you’re going to stand with those people and support them authentically when the time gets tough or not.

[00:40:15] Sean Li: Absolutely. Well, thank you so much for sharing that, Laurie.

[00:40:17] Laurie Reemeyer: Yeah.

[00:40:17] Sean Li: Well, it was a real pleasure talking with you today. And this was very educational for me in many ways. Really appreciate you taking the time to come on the podcast.

[00:40:30] Laurie Reemeyer: Absolutely, Sean. And I want to thank you for your time on the podcast as well. It’s my first podcast, so, kind of, excited. Yeah.

[00:40:38] Sean Li: Thanks again, Laurie.

[00:40:39] Laurie Reemeyer: Thank you, Sean. Go Bears.

[00:40:42] Sean Li: Thanks again for tuning into this episode of the OneHaas Podcast. If you enjoyed our show today, please hit that Subscribe or Follow button on your favorite podcast player. We’d also really appreciate you giving us a five-star rating review. If you’re looking for more content, please check out our website at haas.fm. That’s spelled H-A-A-S.F-M. And there, you can subscribe to our monthly newsletter and check out some of our other Berkeley Haas podcasts.

OneHaas Podcast is a production of the Haas School of Business and produced by University FM. Until next time. Go Bears!

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