Recently Warburton added director of Gold Industry Group to an already impressive resume that includes non-executive directorships of Fortescue Metals Group, Gold Road Resources and Barminco. She is also chairman of the Northern Australia Infrastructure Facility, a member of the Takeovers Panels, a director of Western Australian electricity utility Western Power and founder of online mentoring site Steel Heels.

During her career she has moved through some of the biggest names in mining and also spent time in the construction industry working alongside some of the biggest names there.

“I wasn’t necessarily out looking for lots of other new things to do,” Warburton said when asked about her role with the Gold Industry Group.

“I think it is a role that is really important, particularly here in WA. I think I can add value.

“Gold Road is a member [of the GIG] and the Gold Road board was looking to have a member on the board.”

Warburton believes she can help educate the Australian community about the value the gold industry brings it.

“The profile of the gold industry fell away in recent times,” she said.

“Part of the attraction to me is to remind the community of the value it plays in our community.

“I’m seeing a lot of entrepreneurship coming into the sector and that’s wonderful.”

For one thing, a lot more of the Australian gold industry has come back into Australian hands.

There was a period in the late 1990s and early 2000s when a combination of a decision to sell of the national gold reserve and a US dollar buying two Australian ones led to US players buying a lot of Australian gold mines.

Those US players have decided they no longer want to be in the Australian gold space arguing that a lot of the operations they bought were too small for them.

That has allowed Australian companies to take back those operations and they are bringing vigour to them that is driving value.

That is part of what Warburton sees but there is some historical context to her love of the mining industry.

She grew up in Exmouth in the WA Pilbara and that created her perception of the mining industry as an exciting place to be.

“I reckon I started in mining when I was in primary school billeted out at the Pilbara Swimming Championships in Pannawonica,” she said.

The mining companies built a lot of the facilities that made them ideal for interschool sports carnivals and sometimes trips to these facilities also brought the opportunity to see the mine sites firsthand.

When Warburton qualified as a chartered accountant, one of her first jobs was with Hamersely Iron.

“I spent some time with Hamersley Iron and then with Rio Tinto in London,” she said.

“When I was in London that was when it got into gold mines but that was when miners were selling gold mines.”
 From there it was a diversion into the construction sector and a job with Multiplex.

That was when it was a private company led by the larger than life business figure John Roberts, who Warburton had a chance to work with personally.

“I found him fascinating,” she said.

“I love working with strong people like that. They are always generating ideas. They always keep the ideas flowing until they get the solutions.”

However, it was another Multiplex executive Ross McDiven that helped drive her business development.

“He invested a lot of his personal time teaching me about construction risk and I spent a lot of time teaching him about organisation in the corporate world,” Warburton said.

“I really enjoyed construction, particularly with it being a male dominated environment.

“Both mining and construction male dominated and quite chauvinistic.”

That helped lead Warburton to her mentoring approach.

“It’s a deliberate focus of mine to be a visible role model for women in these sectors,” she said.

“Our goal is to achieve diversity of thought regardless of what the board is.

“You get better results from diversity. It comes from putting teams of people together that are different and bring different things to the table.

“You’re reducing the risk of group think.

Steel Heels grew out of Warburton’s desire to mentor as many up and coming businesswomen as possible.

“I do a lot of face to face, one-to-one mentoring,” she said.

“It was my intent to share the experiences from these one-to-one sessions with other young women.

“I would love to see all of them. Instead I use digital technology to connect role models to emerging young female leaders.

“They can still be learning and sharing experiences through reading about others through the internet.”

The site provides a host of resources to help businesswomen.

Any fees Warburton gets from speaking engagements get put towards growing Steel Heels.

“One of the biggest pieces of feedback I got from young women in industries with low female participation rates is that they wanted to see visible female role models,” Warburton said.

Gold Fields Australia vice-president legal and compliance Kelly Carter has benefited from Steel Heels but has also been lucky enough to get some one-on-one mentoring from Warburton.

She joined the Gold Industry Group board at the same time as Warburton and has also had some close contact with her given Gold Fields Australia’s and Gold Road’s involvement in the Gruyere project.

“Sharon has been a role model for me for a number of years,” Carter said.

“It is a tremendous opportunity to work with her on the [GIG] board. I value her judgement and guidance.

“She was a great help when we worked on the [GIG function] Women in Gold.”

Warburton said one of the goals of Steel Heels was to increase the self-confidence of young women in business.

“I try to encourage them to do roles they’ve not done before,” she said.

“Current male leaders may become more confident to put these young women into roles they wouldn’t have thought about.”

Another issue around getting young women into the resources space is education – although it is a problem for young men too.

There has been a global decline in the number of students taking up science, technology, engineering and mathematics courses and that could lead to a skills shortage for mining.

“We need to get out and pound the pavements with primary schools and high schools,” Warburton said.

“We need to show the young girls and their teachers and their parents that these are wonderful places for women to work.”

Warburton believes children need to see for themselves what the opportunities are.

“A great example is what mining companies are doing with family days,” she said.

“Just before Christmas I took my daughter up to [FMG mine] Cloud Break with 40 other families.

“It gives children the opportunity to see where their parents work and see women on these sites. They can see that these are places that women can work.

“It’s good for the parents too.”

There are some positive things happening in the STEM space though.

Warburton said she had seen a lot o positive things happening.

“My daughter is in year two and I can see that happening already,” she said.

“There are some wonderful positive examples. We need to continue that for sure.”

The Northern Australia Infrastructure Facility is a homecoming of sorts for Warburton.

“When you put into context my childhood and the industry I work in you can join the dots,” she said.

“We have the ability to provide funds to unlock economic and population growth.

“There is huge potential to unlock northern Australia due to its proximity to the rest of the world.

“But lack of infrastructure is probably the biggest issue, be it ports, energy, water, rail or facilities to support agriculture.”

One of the problems, Warburton said, was that financiers had made it harder to get money up there.