Kay Priestly of Rio Tinto is newest member of NAMBC Board

The newest member of the NAMBC's Board of Directors is Kay Priestly, Chief Financial Officer of Rio Tinto's global Copper product group. She is based in Salt Lake City, Utah. Kay was elected at the board meeting in Ulaanbaatar during our 13th Annual Investors Conference and Ikh Tenger Roundtable in September 2010.

Kay holds a B. S. degree in accounting from Louisiana State University and is a certified public accountant. Prior to joining Rio Tinto, Kay had over 25 years of diverse financial and management experience, primarily with global professional services firm Arthur Andersen. While at Andersen, Kay provided tax and consulting services to global companies in the energy and mining sectors.

During Kay's career at Andersen, she held numerous leadership roles, including Managing Partner of the Louisiana/Mississippi practice, member of Andersen's global energy team, contributing author to Andersen's Oil & Gas Manuel, and chair of the firm wide nominating committee responsible for selecting Andersen board members. Kay also served as the lead tax and consulting partner for Freeport McMoRan Copper & Gold, McMoRan Exploration Co., and other Freeport related entities.

In 2000, Kay was named Managing Partner/People and became a member of Andersen's Global Executive Team. In that role, she was responsible for developing the overall people strategy for Andersen, which at the time had 85,000 people in 84 countries and annual revenues of $9 billion. While in this role, she also developed a new, expanded global partnership model approved by the partners worldwide.

Before joining Rio Tinto, Kay served as Vice President, Risk Management and General Auditor for Entergy Corporation, an integrated energy company with annual revenues of $10 billion. Entergy owns and operates power plants with approximately 30,000 megawatts of electric generating capacity, and is the second largest nuclear generator in the United States.

Kay joined Rio Tinto in late 2006 as Chief Financial Officer for Kennecott Utah Copper. While in that role, Kay also assumed responsibilities for the human resources function at Kennecott Utah Copper and initially worked on the labor strategy for the upcoming labor negotiations. In late 2007, when Rio Tinto announced the overall review of the company's asset portfolio following the Alcan acquisition, Kay was asked to lead the divestment activities for some of the U.S. properties identified for potential divestment. She led the divestment of Rio Tinto's 40 per cent interest in Cortez Mines which was sold to Barrick Gold Corporation in March 2008 for $1.7 billion plus retained royalties. She also led the divestment of Greens Creek Mine which was sold to Hecla Mining Company in April 2008 for $750 million. Kay also led the activities associated with the initial public offering for Rio Tinto Energy America's assets, including the initial filings for Cloud Peak Energy with the SEC in 2008.

In November 2008, Kay was appointed Chief Financial Officer – Copper and in that role is responsible for business reporting, planning and compliance; portfolio review and business development; industry analysis and business analysis. Kay also oversees the communications & external relations activities for the Copper product group.

Kay Priestly, CFO, Rio Tinto Copper Group