Keynote speaker

Cameron Kaufman

Senior Systems Intelligence and Circularity Specialist, Coreo

Cameron Kaufman is a Senior Systems Intelligence and Circularity Specialist at Coreo, Australia’s most awarded systems innovation company. Her work sits at the intersection of systems intelligence, circular economy strategy, and large-scale transformation, helping governments and major organisations translate complexity into practical, high-impact action.

Cameron brings both depth and range to her practice. She holds a Master of Environment (H1) from the University of Melbourne and a Bachelor of International Relations and Economics (cum laude) from Tufts University, and has worked across every major economic sector. Her experience spans global asset management and finance, including J.P. Morgan Asset Management, through to Australia’s clean energy and investment ecosystem with the Clean Energy Finance Corporation and the Australian Energy Foundation. This breadth gives her a rare ability to connect financial, environmental, regulatory and operational perspectives within a single systems lens.

At Coreo, Cameron leads the firm’s technical systems intelligence capabilities, including material flow analysis, systems mapping, indicator and metric development, target validation, and evidence-based decision frameworks. She works across industries to identify leverage points, quantify systemic risk and opportunity, and design strategies that move beyond ambition into delivery.

Cameron is a Living Future Accredited (2025) practitioner with the Living Future Institute and has been recognised for her industry leadership through Coreo’s appointment as a Business in Residence collaborator at the University of the Sunshine Coast. She is fluent in five languages and has lived and worked internationally, enabling her to build trust quickly, navigate complexity across cultures, and progress collaborative, high-stakes initiatives.

Presentation title: From Critical Minerals to Critical Value

Presentation synopsis

For generations, we've mined the seam. The next era of Australian competitiveness will come from mining the system.

As demand for critical minerals accelerates, the challenge is no longer finding more resources. It is finding smarter ways to create more value from the resources we already have. Across our resource regions sit untapped revenue streams, overlooked minerals, shared infrastructure and opportunities that remain invisible when every project is viewed in isolation. The question is no longer where to look, but how to look.

Mining has always evolved by recovering more from what already exists, from beneficiation to tailings reprocessing. The next leap forward is systems intelligence: aggregating trace minerals, sharing infrastructure, coordinating recovery across regions, and unlocking value that no single operation could realise alone.

Drawing on more than a decade of systems leadership across Australia's resources sector, Ashleigh Morris challenges conventional thinking about value creation. Through pioneering work mapping the circularity of tungsten carbide in Queensland's Bowen Basin, she demonstrates how value extends far beyond extraction, connecting mining, manufacturing, product use, and material recovery into one integrated system.

Ashleigh will also introduce the Full Value, Full Volume methodology, revealing how the critical mineral that first attracts investment often becomes just one part of a much larger regional opportunity. Through examples including early collaboration across Queensland's emerging vanadium industry and the growing potential of urban mining, she shows how competitive advantage is created when industries operate as connected systems rather than isolated projects.

This keynote offers a practical framework for rethinking critical minerals, not simply as commodities to extract, but as catalysts for more resilient, productive and prosperous industrial ecosystems.