Care for people drives new Australian leader

Alcoa Australia President Elsabe Muller provides some insights from her first few months in the role, and some background on what attracted her to join Alcoa.

I came to Alcoa in October 2024 following a 30-year career with BHP.

Over that time, I experienced the power of diversity, having lived in four countries and worked across multiple commodities including aluminium, iron ore, nickel and coal.

I started my career in the aluminium business and was excited by the opportunity to return my focus to aluminium when the role with Alcoa became available. It is a metal that is vital to our daily lives, being a key component in construction, transport, electronics, food and beverage and recreation, among many other uses. Just as importantly, aluminium is critical as the world moves down the path of decarbonisation and embraces more renewable energy alternatives.

My focus as a leader is on caring for people. Experience has shown me that any workplace that prioritises people achieves success on all levels. And success goes well beyond the bottom line for our business.

With one of its core values being Care for People, Alcoa was clearly calling to me.

In the few months I have been with the company, I’ve been fortunate to visit all our Australian operations – our mines and refineries in WA and our smelter in Victoria. We employ around 4700 people directly and many thousands more as contractors. Plus, we support more than 1500 Australian businesses and provide more than $5 million each year in community investment.

There is also a strong commitment to volunteering at Alcoa that is different to anything I have experienced previously. Caring for our communities is important to our culture and that is evident with some 1150 employees across our WA and Victorian operations volunteering for more than 4700 hours in 2024. We provide volunteering leave to all employees to enable participation, and many of our people go above and beyond with additional commitments to volunteering in the communities where they live.

Something else that has become obvious to me is that we have a lot of long-term employees who have remained with Alcoa for decades, many working their way up from entry-level roles to supervisory and management positions. We also have multiple generations of the same families in our workforce, which is testament to being a long-term part of the communities in which we operate.

When it comes to caring for people, safety comes first. Our leadership team is accountable for safety performance and ensuring a safety culture is at the core of what we do. And every member of our workforce is equally empowered and responsible to ensure safety is their first priority.

Safety is not just about preventing physical injury. It is about ensuring psychological wellbeing for everybody, and that means fostering an environment of inclusion, diversity and acceptance in which people can thrive. What has struck me about Alcoa is the ways in which personal preferences and different backgrounds and ways of thinking lead to positive outcomes. I also see members of our workforce taking that spirit of working for the good of all people outside the workplace to deliver positive outcomes for communities and the people in them.

We continue to evolve our organisation as we plan for the future but the strength and conviction in how we care for others are the foundation on which we can continue to deliver value well into the future.