René has worked on early-stage, resource development and active mining projects in a wide variety of geological settings, in countries in Africa, Asia, Australasia, North America and Europe, and across multiple commodities. He holds a master’s degree in Structural Geology and Tectonics, and specialises in resource estimation, grade control, reconciliation, QA/QC and successful sample collection, with a strong skill set in exploration management for gold and base metals. He is a Chartered Professional and Fellow with the AusIMM, a Member and Registered Professional Geologist with the AIG, and has published papers and provided training on sampling, QA/QC and resource estimation. René is the principal author of many Canadian NI 43-101 and JORC compliant resource and exploration studies and has assisted clients with exploration programmes for these and other projects. He is a Competent/Qualified Person for gold (alluvial, shear-zone, epithermal and porphyry), base metals, seabed mineralisation (nodules), and industrial minerals (garnet sand, diatomite). Currently, René is a director of the AusIMM, an ex-officio member of the JORC Committee, and a director of Straterra (New Zealand’s peak body and national voice for the natural resources industries). He is also a director of opaxe (monitoring public resource reports), and a director of a private-equity mineral exploration company advancing its strategic-mineral assets.

Jo is a mining industry executive with ~30 years’ experience, including 10 years working as an operational mining engineer in manganese, nickel and iron ore mines in Australia. Jo worked in global corporate leadership roles at BHP, principally on integrated closure planning, governance, and leadership of the BHP Resource Engineering Centre of Excellence (mine planning, geotechnical engineering, hydrogeology, tailings and closure). Known globally for her leadership in mine closure, including Chair roles for standard setting industry groups, such as ICMM, Jo’s experience can best be summed up as a technical integrator and translator, skills she is putting to good use in her current role with INX K2Fly, as the Head of Natural Resource Stewardship. Passionate about people development, including as BHP Lead - Technical Capability, she is an active mentor and is a Non-Executive Director for AusIMM and the CoRE Learning Foundation.

Kerry Turnock has over 30 years of resource sector experience spanning geoscientific, operational, processing, technical marketing and technology disciplines. This multidisciplinary experience underpins Kerry’s ability to understand the value of technical inputs for organisational decisions across the value chain, ranging from grass roots exploration through mining and processing and to the end customer. She has a proven track record of successfully delivering break-through projects with functioning solutions that have resulted in realised benefits from resource identification through to improved mining and processing practices. Kerry holds a Masters of Science from Monash University and is the Head of Resource Engineering Excellence with BHP’s Resource Centre of Excellence.