Libby Lyons is a very rare commodity – a female who chairs the board of a Western Australian-listed company.
Ms Lyons admits she got the role at Bibra Lake’s Reclaim Industries Ltd by default – ending up in charge due to the tragic death of her predecessor, Tim King.
She also ended up as president of not-for-profit SIDS and Kids WA for the same reason.
Ms Lyons said she still considers herself an acting chair at Reclaim because of how it came about, and she still has a demanding full-time role as manager of government relations and public policy at Alcoa Australia Ltd.
Six months into the Reclaim chair’s role has provided many valuable lessons.
“I didn’t think I had the necessary qualifications, but you step up when you have to,” Ms Lyons said.
“Most terrifying was conducting the AGM.”
While the Reclaim AGM had a big shareholder roll-out, Ms Lyons has been well prepared by her public affairs career to face tough questions.
Beginning in IT, she ended up doing training and providing user-friendly manuals, jobs which brought her increasingly into the communications field as it grew.
Public affairs roles at Telstra and Western Power have made her believe that communications is certainly not a soft option.
“At Telstra it was not considered soft,” said Ms Lyons, who worked there when Ziggy Switkowski was CEO and then came to WA to join Tony Iannello’s team, which was responsible for pushing through the disaggregation of Western Power.
“In Ziggy’s regime it was always a very important function.
“At Western Power it was the same.”
