Bruce’s career has spanned 40 years of worldwide field experience in the mining industry. In his early career as a geologist Bruce developed an affinity for working with land connected peoples and set up Rio Tinto’s first exploration access agreements with Aboriginal people in Australia. For the last 20 years Bruce has been at the forefront of developing Social Performance as a new professional discipline in the extractive sector. For seven years Bruce was Global Practice Leader – Communities and Social Performance at Rio Tinto, leading a small team of achievement and distinction. As well as his role as an Adjunct Professor at the SMI, Bruce is currently the Principal of a boutique consultancy, resolution88, specialising in ‘Social Licence’ solutions for the extractive sector.

Well published, Bruce maintains that earning a Social Licence is essentially a matter of cultural recognition and economics. Extractive companies want to operate in peoples’ backyards with irreversible changes to natural and social landscapes, some induced by industrial development and some occurring anyway. In return, local people want economic opportunity whilst preserving their idiosyncratic cultural norms and local environmental integrity. Bruce believes strategy is important, but that lack of individual and company capability is the weak link in answering the Social Licence challenge. He believes that many companies attempt to earn social endorsement through public relations approaches at great expense with little success. Instead, he advocates and teaches an approach based on mobilising the practical skills of the extractive sector aligned to the intergenerational aspirations of host communities. Bruce has a unique ability born of many years’ field experience and front line social innovation to reflect, research and teach in the field of Social Licence and Social Performance.

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