Michelle Ash will become the new chair of the Global Mining Standards and Guidelines Group (GMSG) in May, the group announced Tuesday.

Ash, Barrick Gold’s chief innovation officer and a member of GMSG’s leadership council for the past two years, will succeed the group’s current chair, Helius Guimaraes, Rio Tinto’s general manager of data strategy. Until May she will serve as GMSG’s vice-chair.

Once Ash takes the helm, Guimaraes will serve as GMSG’s outgoing chair for two years.

Ash’s “vision for the mining industry mirrors our objective of driving a more open, collaborative industry,” GMSG managing director Heather Ednie said in a news release. “She is a leader both in innovation and transformation who doesn’t lose sight of the people and processes that make the technology happen.”

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Ash said that as chair she hoped to expand GMSG’s membership in “emerging mining powerhouses” like China, South America and Africa, and place more focus on “setting up the industry to successfully navigate the changes in social and technical processes still to come.”

Ash has worked in the mining industry since 1993, getting her start as a blasting engineer in Western Australia, and over the course of her career has focused on business improvement and change management. She joined Barrick in January 2016 and was named chief innovation officer – the first person to hold that title at the company – in December that same year.