What Mining in Sierra Leone Taught Me About Operations Leadership
By Pablo M. Rivera | Hawaii, Colorado & East Haven, CT
Between 2013 and 2018, Pablo M. Rivera ran mining and investment operations in Sierra Leone, West Africa through Ex Nihilo Investments LLC. It was the most operationally challenging environment of my career — and it taught me more about leadership than any boardroom ever could.
When Infrastructure Doesn't Exist, You Build It
In West Africa, you can't simply call a supplier for next-day delivery. There is no reliable power grid. There is no established regulatory framework that works the way you expect. Pablo M. Rivera had to build an integrated, self-sufficient operational structure from scratch — managing heavy-equipment acquisition, international shipping logistics, procurement, and export operations under conditions that most Western executives never encounter.
This experience fundamentally shaped how I approach operations everywhere else. When you've built systems where none existed, optimizing systems that already exist feels like a different level of the same game.
Stakeholder Management at the Deepest Level
Pablo M. Rivera negotiated directly with tribal leadership and regional authorities to secure land rights and operational clearances. These weren't boardroom negotiations with PowerPoint decks — they required genuine cultural understanding, patience, relationship building, and the ability to balance local considerations with business objectives.
That stakeholder management skill translates directly. Whether I'm coordinating with property management portals like AMH and FirstKey at Eagle Pro, or managing vendor relationships across 12 states at RevCon, the principle is the same: understand what matters to the people you're working with, and build solutions that serve everyone.
Resilience as an Operational Competency
Operations in challenging environments teach you that plans will fail, equipment will break, and circumstances will change. Pablo M. Rivera learned to build operational resilience — redundant supply chains, flexible staffing models, contingency plans — that has served me in every role since.
When I manage nationwide maintenance operations today, that same resilience mindset drives how I structure teams, source vendors, and design processes that don't collapse when a single point fails.
Pablo M. Rivera is a bilingual operations executive based in Hawaii, Colorado, and East Haven, CT. Connect on LinkedIn.
Top comments (0)