When Kriti Bhardwaj’s father made the decision to send his 17-year-old daughter to Australia on her own in 2006, the family thought he was crazy.

“There was a lot of backlash from family because their outlook was, ‘why would you want to send a young woman alone to a new country that is very Western? She's going to lose her Indian values’,” Kriti, the co-lead for BHP’s employee resource group, EmBRace (Employees Beyond Race), explains.

 Armed with a piece of paper containing her host family’s details, Kriti set off to Australia to start her new life at Perth’s Curtin University. While completing her double degree in analytical and forensic chemistry, Kriti discovered the difficulties of fitting in.

“I think that was always a question mark, ‘how do you become Australian when you're new to the country?’ You want to fit in with the crowd, and often fitting in happens when you lose your own identity and your own culture,” Kriti says.

“I did have my Indian wear and I thought it was okay to wear that to campus. And then gradually, I just stopped wearing those things. The attention wasn't always bad, but I felt awkward because I stood out from the crowd.”

But her challenges weren’t just around fitting in, for Kriti the biggest challenge was survival and taking care of herself for the first time.

“From a really young age, I was someone who didn't shy away from challenges,” Kriti explains.

“When I arrived in Australia, it was a case of sink or swim. I landed my first job within a week at Hungry Jacks, where started work at 4:30am. I was handed a mop and assigned my first task, which was to clean the toilets – a humble beginning to my journey in a foreign land and one I’ve not yet shared with my Dad."

After completing an internship as a field chemist at Dampier Salt in Karratha while studying, Kriti went on to work as a Research Assistant at Curtin University in 2009 before entering the mining industry as a site-based commissioning chemist in 2011. Since then, Kriti has worked in the resources industry on various operational and maintenance projects including site-based roles.

Along the way, she also gained a post-graduate degree in computing from Melbourne – a city Kriti believes truly expresses Australia’s diversity. This wealth of experience and passion for cultivating diversity has led Kriti to spearhead the Minerals Australia EmBRace team.

“It’s proven that diverse teams perform better, but this can only happen to its full potential with radical inclusion. Ask yourself, ‘who is being left out of the conversation, and why?’” Kriti explains.

“We want to make sure that anybody who comes to work at BHP doesn't ever have to feel they can't be themselves – that they can't bring their authentic self to work, devoid of discrimination.”

When it comes to offering advice to fellow BHP employees, Kriti suggests the first step to eliminating racism is to strike a conversation and lean in with curiosity and openness.

“I think often we become our own limiters,” she says. “You would be surprised the moment you start sharing about your culture more openly how many willing ears there are at BHP. For me personally, I really feel that.”