Bill Tanaka
Bill Tanaka has over 35 years’ experience in resource and reserve estimation; mine design, production scheduling; grade control and reserves reconciliation; mine operating and capital cost estimation, and operational oversight including ten years development and operations experience with two gold mining companies and one copper mining company and over twenty-five years as a consultant. Bill’s experience includes leadership or participation in resource and reserve evaluations at the conceptual, pre-feasibility and feasibility level, and critical roles in due diligence and competent person’s reports for mergers, acquisitions and debt finance. Bill’s project experience includes precious and base metal deposits in North, Central and South America; Southern and West Africa; Australasia; Central Asia; and Russia. For the past 20 years most of Bill’s work has involved technical due diligence reviews and strategic planning for project advancement. Bill has a BSc in Geological Engineering from the Colorado School of Mines; is a Fellow of the Australasian Institute for Mining and Metallurgy and a Qualified Person as defined by NI 43-101 and a Competent Person as defined by the JORC Code.
Jerry Blackwell
Jerry Blackwell is an exploration geologist since 1974. He has worked throughout Canada, Western United States, and Latin America (including Peru and Mexico), with short assignments in parts of Africa, Europe, Greenland, Australia and southeast Asia. He has also run publicly listed companies since 1993.
Jerry is a Registered Professional Geoscientist, Province of British Columbia (APEGBC) and serves as a Qualified Person for several minerals companies in Canada and overseas.
Thomas Kelly
Tom Kelly has over 40 years of worldwide experience with mineral industry leaders such as Freeport-McMoRan Copper & Gold, AMEC Americas and Inca Pacific Resources. He is a recognized expert in minerals project management and development and is fluent in Spanish. Tom is currently President and CEO of Andes Colorado Corporation. Recent work has included a Qualified Persons report for Shandong Gold (for listing on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange) as well as assisting junior miners in their project development work in South America. Tom has bachelor and masters degrees in mining engineering from the Colorado School of Mines, is a Fellow of the Australasian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy and a registered member of the Society for Mining, Metallurgy & Exploration. He serves as a Qualified Person for several minerals companies in Canada and overseas.
Neil Hughes
Neil Hughes is an exploration geophysicist with more than 30 years of international experience. He has been involved in all aspects of the application of geophysical methods in mineral exploration, including method and equipment development whilst at Crone Geophysics, to managing geophysics groups for major mining companies, including Pasminco and MMG. He currently provides geophysical consulting services to the mineral exploration industry.
Neil holds a BSc in Geological Engineering from Queens University and a Masters in Mineral Exploration Technology from Curtin University. He is an active member of the Australian Society of Exploration Geophysicists.
Chris Benn
Chris Benn has thirty three years of experience as a geochemist and geologist for 2 major companies in a range of exploration situations including reconnaissance, project generation and development work for a variety of gold, base metal and industrial mineral styles. The last four years he has worked as a consultant to as number of companies for exploration geochemistry.
Chris holds a B.Sc (Honours) in Geology from Durham University, and a M.Sc in Exploration and Mining Geology from James Cook University