Cassie Boggs: Sometimes you don’t see your own strengths. I think this is particularly true for women, but I think it’s true for everybody. And, you know, you might have your boss at work or other people saying, you know, you should think about doing this or you should try this and it’s a little bit out of what you think is your wheelhouse. And you need to believe those people. They can see the potential and you just have to believe them and take the opportunity.
Theresa Sapara: Welcome to this episode of Leading Women in Mining. My name is Theresa Sapara, I’m with Ernst & Young, Metals and Mining Center of Excellence.
It’s my privilege to have here today, Cassie Boggs, who is the Chair of Hecla Mining Company. Cassie has over 35 years of experience as a mining and natural resources lawyer. Very thrilled to have you with us today, Cassie.
Cassie Boggs: Thank you, Theresa. I’m really delighted to be here.
Theresa Sapara: Great. Let’s just jump right into it. I’m always curious about people’s origin story and very curious about your journey and maybe what attracted you into the sector. So, maybe if you could just share with us?
Cassie Boggs: Sure. I grew up in Colorado. I’m a fifth-generation Coloradan and Colorado, has a deep, rich mining history. So, I grew up going to the mountains as a kid and you go past all those great old mining towns, Cripple Creek and Georgetown and Silver Plume and so, you know, it was just sort of part of my history.
I had planned on being a lawyer. My undergraduate degree is in economics and before I went to law school, I had an economics professor suggest I go to Michigan State University because they had a natural resource economics program and a program in resource development. So, I ended up doing that and that really changed how I thought about my legal career, because I went from thinking I would maybe be a business lawyer but just in domestic business to coming back and joining a law firm that had a very big mining practice in particular. But it was so relevant at the time that it just seemed like this could be a great career.
Theresa Sapara: That’s really interesting. And as you progress throughout your career too, I’m sure we all have like, bumps and scrapes and bruises along the way, but what were maybe some of the critical lessons learned that you had an experience that helped shape you to, you know, where you are today?
Cassie Boggs: Well, you know, when I started practicing in the early ’80s and the mining industry at that time, I think the price of gold suddenly went to $800, which seemed so high back then. And then it crashed and I was in Denver in the ’80s. Both the mining sector and the oil and gas sector were both depressed at that time in Colorado.
And you do a lot of different things. I did a lot of bankruptcy work when I was younger, but it was bankruptcy work in the natural resources sector. And that teaches you some really valuable skills. So, I tell young lawyers when they think, “Oh, I want to be this kind of lawyer or a renewable lawyer,” that I say, “You’ve got to get a broad range of skills because a career over 40 years requires you to be flexible and learn new things and that kind of thing.”
And you know, I had an opportunity, I left Denver, I became a partner in my firm, thought I would stay there. My life plan was I’m going to be in Denver my whole life. I love Colorado and I had the opportunity to join Baker McKenzie, which is a big international firm. And at the time I thought, you know, I should think about going overseas because it seemed to me like it was going to be a long time before we opened a mine in the United States.
People didn’t like mining so much, but there was a lot going on overseas. And I had the opportunity first to go to Kazakhstan and then I had the opportunity to go to Indonesia. I stayed in Indonesia for five years and it changed the way I thought about my career. And so, when I think about sort of lessons, I try to tell people, you know, you have to be open to the opportunity, and the people that sort of plan their career and can’t see any other thing coming along, they have a path, I think they end up maybe with careers that aren’t nearly as interesting as people who are open to an opportunity. I’ve had people say to me, “Oh, I’d love to do what you do and did, live overseas and work different places. But you know, I can’t do it right now. I can’t do this.” And what I tell people is opportunities come when they come. They don’t always come when you want them or when it’s most convenient. You can’t always take every opportunity, but sometimes you have to say, “This isn’t quite right, but I’m going to do it.” And it really led to a really rich career and one that I never envisioned would be my career when I first got out of law school. So, I tell people, “You got to just go for it sometimes.”
Theresa Sapara: Yeah. So, it sounds like adaptability. Grab the opportunities when they, you know, are in front of you, so to speak.
Cassie Boggs: Right.
Theresa Sapara: And have a bit of courage along the way too.
Cassie Boggs: Absolutely. And you know, when I went from private practice to working for Barrick in a business role and I tell people that, you know, sometimes you don’t see your own strengths.
I think this is particularly true for women, but I think it’s true for everybody. And, you know, you might have your boss at work or other people saying, you know, you should think about doing this or you should try this and it’s a little bit out of what you think is your wheelhouse. And you need to believe those people.
You know, it’s one thing to hear from your mom and dad that you’re great. You can do anything. It’s when your peers or your bosses say, you know, Cassie, Theresa, you should try doing X, Y and Z and those people can see something in you that you can’t see. And you think to yourself, oh, I’m not quite ready for that. You know, I don’t have an MBA or I don’t have this or I don’t have that. They can see the potential and you just have to believe them and take the opportunity.
Theresa Sapara: Trust that. And it’s curious because you know, you probably have had mentors along the way that maybe again helped kind of push those boundaries in your personal comfort.
Did you have mentors that helped influence you along the way? Maybe your leadership style or technical capabilities?
Cassie Boggs: Yeah. You know, it was interesting when I first started as a lawyer, particularly as a natural resources lawyer, a mining lawyer, there weren’t very many women that you could kind of copy their style. And I tell people it took me a while to sort of find my own voice, my own style, because, you know, the men I worked with had a completely different style.
And some of them, you know, were a hand-slappers and very difficult and kind of bullies. And it was a style that actually didn’t work very well for me. And so, I think first about some of the women that I would see in leadership positions. When I was in college, I had a professor, Dr. Doris Drury, who was the first woman, she was the chair of the Federal Reserve of Kansas City, and she was an economics professor at the University of Denver. And I can remember thinking, it’s the first woman I’ve seen who was such an expert in her field and had risen to this leadership position. She was a very serious woman. But thinking that’s what I could achieve.
You know, I remember when Ruth Bader Ginsburg was nominated to the Supreme Court in the early ’90s, and she’s about my size. She is under five feet tall, tiny little woman. And she was different than lots of women at that time, women professionals. She was very smart, but quiet and well-spoken, very thoughtful in how she thought about bringing cases and what got argued before the Supreme Court.
And she just was, you know, really a great, I think, icon to see that you didn’t have to be a big personality. You didn’t have to be a screamer or a yeller. You didn’t have to pound your fists, but you could be very firm and successful.
Theresa Sapara: Yeah, that’s really inspiring. And it sounds it takes all types, which, you know, as we look at who’s coming in to work in the sector today and that diversity element, what have you seen, you know, your four decades of experience, how has that changed the sector specifically?
Cassie Boggs: Yeah, I think, you know, we obviously see more women in the industry and I think that’s such a great thing because, women don’t always attack problems the same way. They’re every bit as skilled in all the disciplines that you need. But they also think about these things. And as we’ve seen the mining industry evolve, you know, it’s gone from being, operations that were always dependent entirely on you know, commodity prices and operational skills and that kind of thing.
And now we’ve seen the importance of you actually have to have a social license and you have to have this whole other set of stakeholders on board with what you’re doing. And they have to see the benefits. So, communication skills and empathy and a set of soft skills that used to not be recognized and are now, I would argue, probably one of the most critical parts of a successful mining operation, because if you don’t have a community and the people that are being impacted by your mining operation on board, quite frankly they can shut you down much quicker than any government can.
Theresa Sapara: Fair enough. And as we look at like the new opportunities that are being created because you need all these diverse different talents and skillsets now we’re no doubt competing in terms of talent with so many other sectors. What does that look like from your perspective and how we create new opportunities in the sector or maybe even what Hecla is doing specifically?
Cassie Boggs: Well, you know, I think the biggest challenge for the mining industry is attracting that next generation. And to do that, we have to show them and prove to them that we are different than our grandfather and our father’s mining company was and we are different. But lots of young people don’t get that. They don’t think it’s hip and cool.
You say, have you thought about the mining industry and they shy away. I have the children of some friends of mine who are very interested in sustainability and climate change. And, I say, have you thought about the mining industry? And they kind of like, are you kidding? No. And I say, how do you think you’re going to have solar power if you don’t have silver?
How are you going to have electric cars if you don’t have all these minerals that you need in electric batteries. And so, you have to help young people, I think connect the dots. Maybe not just young people, but a lot of people. You have to help them connect the dots that if we care about an energy transition, we need all forms of energy. So, it’s not about oil and gas or renewables. We need it all. And if young people are very into renewables, they want to think about climate change, you have to help them connect the dots and show them that our industry is leading on the sustainability front.
And I point young people to look at the website of any major mining company, but even, you know, any mining company and they have a sustainability report and they talk about what they’re doing. And then people are like, oh, wow. And they have a set of skills. Again, they’re not mining engineers necessarily or geologists.
But you can say we need chemists. We need computer scientists. We need people engaged in robotics. We need community development specialists. We need psychologists. We need a whole set of skills that people don’t think about the industry. And yet when you, you know, you help them, kind of connect why our industry is so important to their future, then they start to see it as an opportunity. So, at Hecla, we like lots of mining companies often times go to mining universities, you know, Queen’s or Colorado School of Mines. I say we’ve got to start going to, you know, University of Kansas and universities that are not just mining-focused. They are producing the next generation of young people with technical skills of all sorts. Those are the ones we have to have them see this as an opportunity. You don’t just have to go to, you know, the car manufacturers or the power plants or whatever. This is an industry that needs those skills.
Theresa Sapara: Yeah, it’s an industry that touches all to your point.
Cassie Boggs: Right.
Theresa Sapara: And so, the education piece is critical and I think to your point, the opportunities are there. It’s just making maybe the younger generation realize that there are those opportunities.
Cassie Boggs: Yeah. And I think, you know, in terms of having young people see that there are leaders that are diverse and you know, for young women to be able to see women like me who have been successful in getting into senior roles and management is important.
If all you see are people that don’t look like you and don’t act like you, it doesn’t seem like, someplace you want to spend your energy in terms of developing a career.
Theresa Sapara: The other piece I really wanted to talk a little bit about was we know that people are the backbone of the sector. With your role as chair, like what are some critical things that we must get right in terms of talent and maybe how does the chair play into that? I know you’ve got a ton of other responsibilities, but I’m really curious.
Cassie Boggs: Yeah, well, I think, you know, part of it is by encouraging the people looking to fill spots that we have to think broadly about who can fill those needed spots. And again, they’re not always mining engineers. They’re not always, people with technical backgrounds. There are other backgrounds and other industries that we could learn from.
And so, I encourage our searches to be wide and broad. And there are other people on our board that are really, I think, good at this - encouraging, reminding everyone that we all have internal biases and that you don’t have to try to satisfy quotas or anything else, but that people tend to, it’s a natural tendency, pick people who are like them. And so, when you’re interviewing a mining engineer, a male and a female, they both have equal qualifications. But it can be very common to say that, you know, I think this guy is just going to fit into the team better because of your undisclosed and unrecognized bias.
And so, I think we have to remind everybody, look, there’s people that can bring a whole set of different skills, not only technical, but a set of thinking about problems.
Theresa Sapara: I really like that because it sounds like, you know, as we look even at how we recruit and kind of making sure that, you know, the process and mechanisms are evolved so that we can kind of counter this potentially like unconscious bias, as you say.
Cassie Boggs: Exactly. And I think too, we have to look for a wider pool. You know, I think I’ve encouraged, people at Hecla to think about veterans. I think veterans are a perfect source of opportunity for mining companies because people that have been in the military have all the skills that you need for mining. They know how to work in difficult conditions. They understand chains of command. They understand supply chain. They understand working in remote areas. And so, we have to figure out better ways to encourage that pool to think about the mining industry and transfer those skills to the mining industry.
Theresa Sapara: Makes perfect sense to me, Cassie.
Cassie Boggs: Yeah.
Theresa Sapara: And I’m also thinking about, you know, the folks who are actually in the sector right now and that we’re looking to become maybe the trailblazers or really shake up the sector a bit as well.
What advice would you give to those professionals and how they can shape and make meaningful change or impact?
Cassie Boggs: Yeah, you know, I think if I had one thing to change about my career, I would have spent more time learning to be a better public speaker and a better communicator, because I think at the end of the day, you know, it’s easy to worry that you’ve got to be the smartest person in the room.
Theresa Sapara: Sure.
Cassie Boggs: And that’s just not true. You need to be smart enough, but you really need to be able to communicate. And it doesn’t matter if you want to be arguing in the Supreme Court or you want to be a businessperson in front of your board or you’re a researcher and you have to apply for a grant and have a five-minute elevator speech of why you should be funded.
It’s about being able to speak in a very cogent, efficient way, be able to, you know, persuade people as to what you’re trying to say. And I think certainly when I was younger, I thought it was just about expertise. But when I think about who I thought were the, you know, the most important people to listen to and to follow, they weren’t usually the smartest people in the room.
They were the most capable of communicating. And I think it’s a skill that when I was younger, I thought it was natural, you were either good at it or you weren’t. And it was, as I got older that I realized, no, it’s about practice and it’s about spending time on that part of it, not just getting the answer right, understanding what the answer is, but being able to communicate it, conveying that message.
Theresa Sapara: It’s terrific advice because I think to your point, how you’re able to tell the story, but then also being able to pull from the talent all around you, I think it’s pretty impactful and powerful.
Cassie Boggs: Yeah. And I think in the mining industry in particular, what I think might happen is mining projects are getting so big and so expensive and more and more risky and so mining companies are going to have to cooperate.
It’s not something we do very well in the mining industry. Big oil has been doing it for years. You know, where big oil gets together and they have a multibillion-dollar project and three big — all competitors arguably cooperate to develop a project. And that I think is what we’re going to start seeing in the mining business.
And that’s where I think there’s a real opportunity for women, because I think women kind of naturally are more collaborative. And that seems to me to be a real opportunity to bring in women’s skills in terms of how we’re going to make decisions and that kind of thing.
Theresa Sapara: That’s wonderful. I think you’re right. You know, if we think about, one win in the mining companies, a win that we share across the sector and industry, and we might not look at it that way today.
Cassie Boggs: Right. And I think it’s going to again pull on this evolution of it’s a combination of soft skills and technical skills to be successful and you know, a more diverse workforce I think brings that to the mining industry.
Theresa Sapara: That’s wonderful. Cassie, it’s been such a pleasure to speak with you today, to hear your words of wisdom, your experience. So, thank you very much.
Cassie Boggs: Thank you. It was really fun.
