This article was provided by the Ontario Mining Association (OMA), an organization that was established in 1920 to represent the mining industry of the province.
Dominique Dionne, Vice President Corporate Affairs for Ontario Mining Association member Xstrata Nickel, has been recognized as one of Canada’s leading businesswomen along with her colleague Sepanta Dorri, General Manager Business Development at Xstrata Nickel. Ms Dionne received the RBC Champions Award in the 2012 Canada’s Most Powerful Women: Top 100 program.
Ms Dorri was named to the 2012 Canada’s Most Powerful Women: Top 100 program in the Trailblazers and Trendsetters category. The OMA joins in congratulating both executives for this achievement. These honours were officially presented at the 10th annual ceremony run by the Womens’s Executive Network (WXN). It recognizes female business leaders in the private, public and not-for-profit sectors. WXN started 15 years ago and it has approximately 18,000 members.
“Dominique has relentlessly pursued her goal to develop the next generation of female leaders in the mining sector by championing Xstrata’s support of programs to expand opportunities for women within our industry,” said Ian Pearce, Xstrata Nickel Chief Executive Officer in a letter to staff.
Ms Dionne has been an active contributor in OMA activities and initiatives since she started working at Xstrata Nickel in 2006. She has been a leader in Meet the Miners events at Queen’s Park and she helped get the OMA high school video competition So You Think You Know Mining get off the ground five years ago. She volunteered as a key member of the SYTYKM judging panel for a number of years.
In the December 2012 edition of the Financial Post Magazine in an article about the Top 100 Most Powerful Women in Canada, Ms Dionne was noted as a Champions Award winner. “She is committed to mentoring young public affairs professionals and sponsors programs to expand opportunities for women within the mining and metallurgical industries.”
Active in her community, Ms Dionne sits on the board of directors of Fondation de l’Universite du Quebec and Les Grands Ballets Canadiens de Montreal. She also is currently volunteering as serving as President of the Quebec Mining Association (QMA), a sister organization of the OMA. She is the first female and the first non-engineer to lead the QMA.
She is a graduate of the Universite du Quebec at Montreal and Ms Dionne completed the program for management development at Harvard Business School. Before joining Xstrata Nickel, she worked in communications and public relations positions with companies in the mining, forestry and transportation equipment industries.
“Sepanta is the first and only female head of business development within the entire Xstrata portfolio,” said Mr. Pearce about Ms Dorri. “Sepanta serves as a mentor and role model for Canadian women in our organization, dedicating a significant amount of her time towards developing Xstrata Nickel’s gender inclusiveness strategy and coaching women as part of Xstrata Nickel’s gender Learning Program.”
Other female mining executives recognized in the WXN program for 2012 included Leslie O’Donoghue, Executive Vice President Operations for Agrium, and Zoe Yujnovich, President and Chief Executive Officer of the Iron Ore Company of Canada.
Xstrata Nickel, headquartered in Toronto, is the fifth largest global nickel producer and one of the world’s largest producers of cobalt. In Canada, the company has mines in and processing facilities in Sudbury and at Raglan in Quebec.