Forty Under 40: Ashley Zumwalt-Forbes, Black Mountain

Ashley Zumwalt-Forbes, co-founder, president and director at Black Mountain Metals, Black Mountain Exploration and Black Mountain Carbon Lock, is today’s featured Forty Under 40 honoree.

Zumwalt-Forbes is an engineer with nine years’ experience in acquiring, financing and developing both greenfield and brownfield natural resources projects around the globe.

After graduating from Harvard Business School, she joined Rhett Bennett at Black Mountain. Within a year, she had co-founded Black Mountain Metals, a battery metals mining company based in Perth, Australia.

“To say that I felt completely terrified and out of my depth is an understatement,” she said of the experience. “However, I stuck with it. Day in and day out, I woke up, worked as hard as I possibly could, asked questions, learned, grew and left it all out on the field.”

“That is now a successful business,” she continued, “and I am much more well-rounded for the experience (albeit definitely shaved a few years off of my life).”

In addition to a MBA from Harvard Business School, Zumwalt-Forbes graduated summa cum laude from the University of Oklahoma with a B.S. in Petroleum Engineering.

Prior to joining Black Mountain, she worked in several lead engineering roles at Exxon Mobil and XTO Energy, managing drilling, completions and planning aspects of international shale exploration, laying the groundwork for over $1 billion capital deployment.

Click here for Ashley Zumwalt-Forbes’ complete profile.

Take a look at all of the Forty Under 40 honorees.