Education

University of Newcastle

Bachelor of Engineering Chemical Engineering

2006

Podcasts

39:20

758: What It’s like to be a Chemical Engineer With Brenda Denbesten, Orica [Main T4C Episode]

Brenda Denbesten has been a chemical engineer in the manufacturing and mining industry for over 15 years. Currently, she is a continuous improvement manager in Australia at Orica. Brenda is also the founder of a YouTube series called “Chronicles of a Female Engineer,” where she explains what engineers do, how..

Career Path

Interview Highlights

“I still hear a lot of people talking about a boys club and I guess that’s by virtue of a male dominated industry. We are going to see that there is plenty more men around the women, but you certainly, I certainly find there is lot of support for women.”

Best Career Advice

“Brenda, don’t be afraid to try something new and give everything you put your hand to your, or take initiative. Just take one step at a time. You don’t have to know the full journey to take the next best step.”

Career Challenge

“It was when I was at my operation superintendent roll and I was actually at BHP at the time working on a time when we had one of our plans to meet uranium solvent extraction when he was in that role where one of the plants was offline. So to start just a couple to solve and extraction, and this one of the cup sections was off, the other one was, and what this meant was that the offline one had multiple people working in it and trying to fix pumps and try to take the scale-out and tanks in the vessels. So it essentially everything was open. Or if you wanna, if you want to call it a open-heart surgery on one, and the other plan was operating as per normal. So the challenge year was really kinda deal and manage two work groups.”

Skills

Strategic Planning, Metallurgy, Mineral Processing, Minerals, Mining, Continuous Improvement, Commissioning, Engineering, Process Engineering, Operational Planning, Team Leadership