 Okay, so we're going to start the interview with Jennifer Hooper Today is the 25th of August 2015 and we are at the Fairmont in Toronto and the interviewer as usual will be William Great, we're just gonna start a simple question. Could you please state your full name? Jennifer Jean Hooper. Could you please state your age? I'm 50 And where were you born? I was born in Ottawa actually, but I didn't live there very long after that We kind of moved around a little bit and go back for a bit and then but mostly I grew up in a very small town in southwestern, Ontario. Okay, and what did your parents do? They were teachers. Okay, and they moved a lot as teachers In the first, yeah, in the first six years we moved a bit and then sort of settled in the southwestern, Ontario Okay, and as a child what were your interests or hobbies or pastimes? I probably Interestingly enough, I did like rocks As a kid, but probably liked cats and dogs and birds and animals and nature As a kid bicycling, being out in nature Small town, there's you know, not much else to do. So, yeah, that's how I come to you. So nature and rocks Right on And as a your early education, what classes did you seem to like or excel at? Yeah, I didn't really excel at very much until I sort of sparked up in grade 10 physics and then grade 12 math. Okay, those are the only two classes that sparked any imagination for me and then And then I went into engineering at Waterloo. Why engineering? I don't know if it was like this huge Brilliant career aspiration as much as it is. I like I was I like sciences and math. I was good at sciences and math Of the sciences, I preferred chemical chemistry. So I went into chemical engineering and So it just seemed like a logical Career to pursue as opposed to a passion to pursue. Okay. There's more practical thing. Yeah So you went into chemical engineering specifically and then I was interested in the environment. So in my Fourth year, I took the environment option and then And I started working at DuPont and then I did my masters at Queen's part-time in civil environmental studies Okay, and what would you consider your first job you just mentioned DuPont? Would that be that was my first post-graduate like post finishing my BSC job? But in it's interesting again because things seem to come full circle My first co-op jobs at Waterloo were with mining I had a job in Smelter in Timmins, Ontario, and then I had an outside environment job of Timmins, Ontario. How was that? Yeah, it was 1984 I guess You know, I mean it was Exciting enlightening My first experience inside the heavy industry. So first time inside a smelter. It's quite a awesome Experience just with molten metal going overhead and cauldrons and pouring out of You know slag pipes and all of that kind of stuff. So it's the first experience. It was was quite Awesome really And it was First time, you know an engineering textbook when you see a distillation column and you see the heat exchanger or the Reboilers located up at the top Well, it was great to get out in industry to understand. That's not exactly how it unfolds in on the ground because you don't put 20 tons of a heat exchanger High in the sky When you can just pipe things down to the ground. So I don't know. It was just like taking the unit operations from the textbook I should see how it's applied. It's laid out one way and then seeing it as applied. I mean, I love the co-op aspect. I Love the co-op aspect the work aspect of engineering much more than I liked the study Well, not that I didn't study, but I like yeah, the words on the hands on more than the textbooks agreed. I agree And when you first went to university including the co-op jobs Especially in engineering. Were you one of the few women or? If you looked at chemical engineering even by then it was close to half-half Now if you look at engineering as a faculty, it was probably down at 15% Electrical Mechanical civil didn't have a high percentage chemical bit And especially environmental I bet I did my environment as a master's part time So in the early 80s the environment was just kind of finding its way into engineering wasn't it was a option in fourth-year Chemical engineering, but it Really wasn't a faculty on its own. I think a lot of schools now have environmental engineering as a faculty in the 1980s But that's even today. I think that's Much more popular For women. Yeah in general. Yeah from what I hear So so those were your first jobs and then you said you started working at DuPont What was your job there? I started as a process engineer and then Within a couple years I switched into the environmental department spent about Seven years I guess In the environment department and then I did an operations leadership job for two years and then took on a regional health safety and environment kind of corporate type of work and Yeah, and then just progressed from there until 2005 and that's when I left DuPont and Worked for the government of Ontario for almost two years and then came and joined the mining industry Tell me a bit about your your health and safety job for DuPont Yeah, I mean DuPont's a great company and very in a world-renowned in terms of its safety culture It's got a very strong safety culture In fact my time at DuPont because the safety health environments Typically structured together many companies to want included Most of my focus was on the environment in fact because safety was so I think tightly held and Really well managed within the business units within the operations that You know we did some things in health and safety in DuPont at the corporate level But a lot of the standards and systems It was sort of continuous improvement as opposed to step change whereas on the environment file DuPont's a great company in that as well Kind of started in thinking the mid to late 80s getting really quite aggressive in that But so that work was sort of step change work whereas health and safety at that time was more continuous improvement Okay, and when you were in that position what improvements or changes did you Your part of our environment will go with health and safety first Yeah, I mean before I joined DuPont in sort of early to mid 80s the whole chemical industry really went through a huge transformation From a health safety and environment perspective, but perhaps driven From a process safety side of things after some explosions in the industry probably most notably Bhopal and so the chemical industry was really up against it in terms of Social and government licensed to operate and that really brought into Place this concept of responsible care and that I entered sort of just at the tail end of the first five years of that where sort of common principles common systems common Standards were being deployed across the industry worldwide. I mean each country had its sort of national flavor of that But I came in at the tail end of that and probably the biggest transformation was in the process safety side of things So not you know sort of task safety or rules safety, but those big type of Disasters that Thankfully don't happen very frequently, but when they do the consequences to human life are catastrophic. So So that really was a big focus in health and safety When I when I joined it was probably more focus on that than on the environment No from a safety perspective if I break it down into kind of Okay, behavioral safety or safety rules or task-based safety controls or those things that that happened frequently But low consequence. I mean this is sort of safety lingo lingo lingo now I Think you know people on as a company had has a good record in both actually postal safety and and then personal safety But there was a lot of work done on the process safety side for sure looking at the High hazard processes and what if analysis what could go wrong? What are our controls? Okay putting in processes to systemically review that every Certain period of time depending on the hazard of the process and that kind of thing so very Safety was very connected. It still is very connected to the technical Piece of the business And as for the environment, what was what kind of work did you do there and how did DuPont see? CD environment then I guess what what kind of Issues really facing or what I guess were their main goals. Yeah, so the big I mean in my early years of DuPont, I was located in one one operation and Kingston site Kingston, Ontario, so my work there was very much looking at the emissions and the baselines and and so not only meeting regulations but going well beyond and and What year but at early 90s there was a new VP of safety health and environment that came in and a new CEO and they They brought in the phrase the goal is zero and for health safety and environments So zero injuries zero illnesses zero incidents environmental incidents and zero waste and emissions. So You know tough goal. It's a it's a tough goal But what it did was sort of transform the mindset and so, you know businesses Started to look for Uses for their byproducts. So One, you know Cory and countertops really fine like really high-end material And so they you know, but it's all shaped and so as you cut a sink or you cut a counter There's always going to be excess and so instead of landfilling paying to landfill a really expensive material They found other uses for that. I mean something as simple as making a Korean pen beautiful decorative pen that can be given as a word So there was a real I guess mindset shift Looking at waste as a valuable commodity and then the other big focus Indipont in the kind of late 80s early 90s was in I'm sure still is this climate change And then the other focus back then was ozone depletion because the refrigerants were primary Like high ozone depletors and so transforming that business unit into we still needed refrigeration But how do you do that without using the flow products? that also caused ozone depletion and then in climate change There was one process emission associated with the nylon business that was high climate change Greenhouse gas factor and so the abatement system and so yeah, we got into Then it was not only Controlling the emissions and finding outlets for What used to be considered waste, but then you know bringing a business concept. So Japan was kind of an early Company to get into the emissions trading and try to figure that out and what is it and is it You know, is it the right approach and I mean that that was Back in late 90s early 2000s, so I don't know. I don't know where where DuPont is in that space anymore But so I would say kind of that paradigm shift of the world is zero Really did kind of turn people's minds around prevention and and finding Yeah, different outlets for their waste and recycling okay, and you'd also speaking of Global warming and the environment you you worked as a You worked with pollution probe. I'm not mistaken. Yeah, I'm on the board on the board Yeah, you tell me first of all, what is pollution probe and it's an NGO actually it's a national NGO and their focus is Really to enable constructive environmental sustainable development policy development So working with businesses working with governments working with First Nations working with other NGOs around how do we get progressive science-based Good public policy, so you know I like pollution probe because they have a Solutions focused willing to work with anybody that's wanting to focus on good science and good public policy and good outcomes They're not an adversarial Headline catcher type of NGO. Yeah, yeah, and So so you worked at DuPont and then you said you work for the government as What was your role? I was in policy development. I started with the Ministry of Labor Which for I didn't spend that long maybe six months. I worked in what was called the Inspections investigations enforcement secretariat and The primary job of that when I was there was to develop and enact Some new regular new legislation on enabling ministries to share information from department department, so with an inspection Turns up something in From an environment that is positive information from a health and safety that within limits There can be some information sharing between ministries. That was the main piece of work I did there and Then I joined the air policy and climate change branch Ministry of Environment and the primary focus there was working on the climate change plan for Ontario back in 2006 2007 And then you made the lead to the mining industry. Yeah, and so what do you do now or yeah? So I I joined the base metals business unit here based out of Toronto and mostly I think I joined as director of regulatory affairs, but a lot of the work was on You know hazard classification of our products You know being still involved if climate change consultations so it was more kind of the technical component of government affairs was a lot of the work I did in the first year or so And then after that it was Head of sustainability for base metals So then had safety health environment more of a closer to the operations when I first joined there was a bit more externally focused And then it was at the end of 2011 that I took on the Global role for Valley Group for health and safety okay, and I've interviewed lots of people who've worked for Valley or in Co. Yeah. Oh, yeah Yeah, I joined shortly after the acquisition. So actually never yeah 2006 and I joined in October 2007. Okay, so you don't you didn't witness any of the The major changes. Well, I mean, yeah, I mean I came post acquisition. So So now now that you do work in the in the mining business or mining and metallurgy Do you I often like to ask this question for people in the business in the industry Do you see a disconnect between the natural resource world and the general public? And especially when it comes to a lot of your experience which is comes in safety and especially the environment Yeah, so, I mean, I think the first comment I would make is I Think there's a Distance, I don't know if it's a disconnect or there's certainly a distance between What we do in the natural resource sector and what the public knows about what we do Or how we do things so I think there's been a And there's certainly a disconnect I think between Even the understanding of of mining is is kind of the base Foundation of industry and then the foundation of many of the consumer products that that we all enjoy and that That connection is not strong in the public mind. So you can't grow it. You have to mine it. That's what Someone else had told me that's a good It's a good line. I have to use that Yeah, so this so I don't think we've done a great job of Talking about the value add to the society that comes from mining and because you know often It's okay a number of jobs and amount taxes and honor royalties all that stuff I mean, I don't think the public has much of it. Unless you work in the mining industry or in a mining town like a Sudbury or whatever It's not enough right so, you know, Kella My spin poach who's a public school teacher Yeah, but we're We create so many jobs. Yeah, but that doesn't impact her the quality of life of her family But then talk about the car and the cell phone and the watch and All the other stuff and it starts to click a little better. Absolutely. Yeah, and I was actually doing a bit of reading on on how there's There's almost an ironic shift right now with the natural with renewable energy and how the big go-to renewable energies right now are Wind and solar both which need massive amounts of minerals both which need to be Sported greatly by mining Especially with your rare earth magnets and metals and things like that silicates and so So, yeah, there is definitely a gap. Yeah There's a gap a lack of education in in what really mining provides for for the entire planet But yes, you're not first also to mention that There could be a better job done as well from the mining industry to To make it the information a bit more available and yeah, and I mean, I think it's I mean like any industry the increase in transparency and public reporting and more quantitative reporting to try to Point paint the picture for folks. That's been increasing and will continue to increase which I think is fantastic But yeah, I mean that's a big difference between working for a Dupont versus working for the mining company, you know People can identify with the DuPont brand, right? So I don't know if it's still DuPont Lycra, but at the time I worked there DuPont Lycra DuPont Teflon DuPont I don't know what the Stainmaster So it's in their homes. It's on their fry pan. It's on their floors. It's on their workout gear so it's a It's a well-known brand and people can touch and feel yeah, whereas You know, yeah, everything mine is not stainless steel going into yeah building construction or a new railroad and I Don't know if you stain the steel in a railroad probably not but we use a lot of iron ore in it This doesn't touch the day-to-day of the general public. Yeah Yeah, the number of minerals mine for an iPhone They don't all go. Yeah, I found it's called an iPhone. Yes from Apple, but yeah, that's true and Now having also so having shifted in the mining industry how Present or absent our women in that business or and I guess you're fairly new to it But I guess have you seen a change or yeah, I don't know what the from an industry perspective, but I think Again, I'm guessing it's between 10 to 15 percent That's what it is in our company and that's probably representative of the industry So it's not not a high percentage of women Does that represent the entire company when you say that mm-hmm all yeah So all functions operations or corporate functions or so it's the whole that would be the whole company I don't offhand. I don't know what the split is between sort of operations roles versus more More corporate functions or support function rules or technical or engineering. Yeah, or other roles there There seems to be More and more now. There's there's more women who go to school in engineering basically in stamp But there still seems to be less women in the natural resource industry when it comes to actually Working so are you able to I don't know why that is Directly know why that is I mean certainly from a I mean certainly would there be no difference whether you from a lab Perspective say a laboratory technician or an engineering department. I don't think there's a difference in the work environment From one lab to the next lab or one engineering department to the next engineering department It's office work with some time in the field and all of that kind of stuff So I don't know why there would be a difference there You know certainly in terms of our operations, I think we're getting better But there's some basic things like you know, there's a company and I'll make a little plug for a company in Sudbury Called cover gals. So it's just a great example, right? So You have to wear certain coveralls Underground and they're not particularly well designed for women. Yeah, they're where they own dragons. Yeah. Yes Yeah, so there's lots of energy and real a lot of innovation and so that's just an example of you know, is it Is it an industry that that is? Unconsciously unwelcoming It certainly it's not a consciously unwel I've never experienced to be consciously unwelcoming But things basic things like does the safety equipment? Is it designed for women? Yeah Is the work underground You know, does it take into account? Women's like to use their bathroom other separate bathrooms or there's you know, just and so I mean that's an area that we focus on is so that just even the basic Work environment bathrooms Equipment all of that kind of stuff and and I think as an industry we could do a better job Okay Have you joined any Well, you're on a board. Have you joined any other boards or organizations? Yeah, I mean I have over the years. It's the only board I'm on right now. I was Well when I worked for just for base metals that was on the Board and technical committees at the nickel Institute. So that's the industry association With the nickel industry and then I Was on the board of directors for C lap it was another Canadian environmental law and policy NGO I was on that board for maybe a year. So so that's pretty much it and Looking back I Mean you're you're much younger than a lot of my my interviewees and you're still you still work full-time but Looking back so far What would be the the proudest or some of the proudest moments in your professional career? You know, I think So the only reason I'm pausing is because it's I'm not gonna answer this question in terms of moments, but I'm very proud of Our company and the industry is really Really trying to Make leaps in health and safety really looking at Everything from Innovation so how can we innovate new technology to remove people from the risk? right down to You know, how do we put in? How do we look at the work environment? How do we look at the human factors? And so the the industry is really I think Well, I can speak more directly for my company is really Facing the challenge head-on and with great passion and commitment in terms of Really improving the health and safety results And the other thing I You know, I the whole You know, I'm proud to work in the mining industry. I really am and You know my friends my family or some people that might say yeah, but you have so many impacts, you know, you're blowing up mountains and filling in lakes and You know, sometimes people in certain areas have to be relocated because of first sometimes for safety reasons other other because of there's going to be an operation there someday and Sort of the catch-22 in mining the way I've simplified it in my own mind is Some of the impacts are felt short-term and Local and that's true. We do have an impact in mining and there's no sense of saying we don't But when you look at the benefits to local infrastructure to the future to education to the future of Especially some of the countries that we're going and when you look at the benefits I in my mind, I'm proud to work in mining because you know There's a lot of countries in the world that need positive development and I think responsible mining and taking into consideration the the need to provide a social benefit and a positive social legacy legacy beyond the time that we're going to be there Is Jumping to be proud of and hard to communicate because the the local and short-term stories are always easy to communicate the longer term benefits are More difficult, but they're they're real and they're there and they're really and as for a lot, especially if you look at mining mines in other parts of the world Mines can last long you can have a I don't know Yeah, so we're under years exactly hundred could be 40 could be 20 and all depends But are there parts mines in parts of the world where? Because mining is cyclical where The development of a mind has helped develop an entire community But Is there is there a balance there between I guess relying too much on the mind itself and not enough on What's gonna happen or what were what what would happen if Yeah, exactly and so I think You know the trend for sure now is And this started predates me coming into mining But what is the post closure plan in terms of economic diversification so that the town is better Better when you leave right so that it is has got a sustainable economy. It's got Reclaimed environment where we've had some impacts, but there is a Drive to take in economic diversification of the community so that at the end of end of mine life You don't just pull up stakes and then because when when you open a new facility In especially in some regions of the world many people come they come for employment And so how can you as a company then not only focus on those direct jobs? But how can you build capacity for the? Sort of the ancillary jobs that will then form the basic economy post closure So that is part of the whole mind development mind closure planning cycle now Okay, and if you were to You were to address yourself to someone much younger like a student or someone like that What would be a a life lesson or a piece of advice you would give them? Hmm look into the future of their career profession. I don't know. I think it's Fine work that's and find the work and find the place where the values match your own and And the other thing I think I'd say is Don't put any artificial boundaries around your capabilities or your contributions like you know when you work in organizations sometimes You know there's structures as processes and all that but you know if you see some important and valuable work to do and It's consistent with the company direction and the company values and it sparks some values and some passion in you don't let False barriers will be back Good advice. Is there anything else you'd like to add or share? Well, thank you very much, okay, I appreciate it