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Meet the team
WGM prides itself on the global experience and expertise of its staff and associates. Below is a list of our senior geological and mining consultants, plus contact emails. Click on the appropriate name to learn more about the individual.
If you are interested in joining our team, please visit our careers page for the latest listings.
Joe Hinzer, M.Sc., P.Geo. - President
With more than 30 years in the mining industry, Joe Hinzer has wide expertise in a number of areas. He has managed a gold mine in Côte d’Ivoire, and has been responsible for mineral exploration throughout North America and West Africa. His experience in North America includes solid field experience and the design and management of exploration programs across Canada for major mining companies and junior mining companies. A recent assignment for the government of Nunavut was to develop a land resource management regime for Canada’s newest Territory which encompasses 20% of the area of Canada.. He is fluent in English, French and German.
Email: jhinzer@wgm.ca
Al Workman, B.Sc., P.Geo. - Vice President
Al Workman is an exploration geologist with more than 30 years of experience in diverse metallogenic settings, including assignments at all levels of exploration including grass-roots programs, project valuation, property evaluation, geophysical interpretation, diamond drilling and ore reserve estimates. As Project Geologist, he executed a key role in the discovery of the Holt-McDermott gold deposit, north of Kirkland Lake, Ontario. Mr. Workman’s strengths lie in the design and management of exploration projects, and in technical assistance to Government institutions.
Email: aworkman@wgm.ca
Michael Kociumbas, B.Sc., P.Geo. - Vice President
Michael Kociumbas is a geologist with 20 years of experience, including project management and exploration for a variety of commodities. Mr. Kociumbas specializes in 3D geological modelling, resource / reserve estimates and completion of National Instrument 43-101 reports. He has also assisted clients with the implementation of Gemcom geological software and has participated in due diligence reviews, valuations and feasibility studies of precious and base metal, iron ore, industrial mineral and gemstone deposits in North and South America, Europe, Africa, Asia, the South Pacific and the Middle East.
Email: mkociumbas@wgm.ca
Kurt Breede, P.Eng. - Director, Marketing and Technical Services
Kurt Breede is WGM's Gemcom GEMS and Whittle expert, and lead resource modelling engineer. Mr. Breede has over 12 years experience in the mining industry including exploration, engineering and geological consulting, IT and marketing. He has acted as Senior Technical Project Manager on over half a dozen large-scale enterprise IT projects, implementing Microsoft SQL-based Mine Production Management Systems. He has also worked as Project Manager and/or lead consultant on several enterprise-level implementations including: Breakwater, Myra Falls Mine, Myra Falls, BC, CVRD INCO, Thompson Mine Complex, Thompson, MB; Goldcorp, Red Lake Mine, Red Lake, ON; North American Palladium, Lac des Iles Mine, Thunder Bay, ON; and Centerra Gold, Boroo Mine, Mongolia.
Email: kbreede@wgm.ca
Jack McOuat, B.A.Sc., P.Eng. - Principal Consultant
Jack McOuat is one of the founding partners of the WGM group and until recently served as Chairman and Director of Watts, Griffis and McOuat Limited and Vice President of WGM Inc. Mr. McOuat acts as Executive Engineer for many of the company's projects, initiating programs and participating in most client-company negotiations. He provides input during project development and peer review of work in progress and takes a particular interest in the assessment of the results of exploration programs and the establishment of key parameters for project development. As a technical and financial advisor, Mr. McOuat provides counsel to major mining corporations engaged in mergers and acquisitions, and has acted as an expert witness.
Email: jmcouat@wgm.ca
Ross D. Lawrence, B.A.Sc., M.Comm., P.Eng. - Principal Consultant
Ross D. Lawrence has established international credentials in the valuation of mineral properties and mining companies, mineral policy development for foreign and domestic governments, economic analysis of mining projects and project management. Mr. Lawrence has managed WGM's contracts with foreign governments pertaining to mineral development policy and institutional strengthening. Mr. Lawrence has served as Project Director on a wide range of mineral exploration and development projects in Europe, Australia, Africa, Asia and the Americas. Within Canada, Mr. Lawrence is past-President of the Canadian Association of Mining Equipment and Services for Export (CAMESE), and Director and past-Chairman of the Northern Centre for Advanced Technology in Sudbury.
Email: rlawrence@wgm.ca
Velasquez Spring, B.A.Sc., P.Eng. - Senior Geologist
Velasquez Spring has 45 years of experience in the mineral industry with a solid background in the planning and managing of exploration programs, due diligence, feasibility studies, and valuations of both large and small deposits, and operating mines. The experience has been worldwide dealing with governments at all levels, diplomatic offices and institutional organizations and covering deposits of precious and base metals, iron, nickel, uranium, manganese and a suite of industrial minerals including dimension stones. During his career, Mr. Spring has investigated hundreds of mineral deposits.
Email: vspring@wgm.ca
Nikolay Paskalev, M.Sc. - Manager, Geomatics and Cartography
Nikolay Paskalev is a geomatics specialist with over 10 years of experience in the mining industry in areas of cartography, remote sensing, and GIS. He has managed, analyzed, researched and compiled geospatial data for over 150 NI 43-101 technical reports covering 51 different countries. Mr. Paskalev has also designed numerous custom maps for corporate news releases and public presentations.
Email: npaskalev@wgm.ca
Stephen Roberts, Ph.D. - Senior Social and Economic Scientist
Dr. Roberts is regional manager of WGM's Vancouver office, and leads the company's environmental, socio-economic, CSR, and First Nations studies. He has over six years of experience in the area of community consultation and mine closure planning. Dr. Roberts was responsible for the development of the socio-economic component of the Environmental Impact Assessment for the proposed New Afton mine.
Email: sroberts@wgm.ca
Shadi Morton, B.Sc. - Associate Geologist
Ms. Morton has over five years experience in the mining industry as an exploration and open pit mine geologist. Ms. Morton has experience with databases and geological/presentation software systems, such as Minesight, GEMS, Vulcan, MapInfo and Corel Draw.
Email: smorton@wgm.ca
Ben Ayad M. Ali, Ph.D. - Senior Associate Geologist
Mr. Ali has over 20 years experience in the mining industry for precious and/or base metal in north and west Africa and in North America. His exploration activities include regional geoscientific compilation, property selection and acquisition, geo-structural interpretation of airborne geophysics and regional geochemistry, realisation of preliminary field works (geological control of geophysical and/or geochemical anomalies), management of all other exploration aspects and human resources. Mr. Ali contributed to mine infrastructure planning for mine development, follow-up work from exploration stage through resource estimation, mine development, mine production and underground exploration, geological modelling of deposits designed to promote researches aiming at extending mineralization at the level of the mine or at a regional scale. Software experience include GEMS, ARCVIEW and AUTOCAD.
Email: abenayad@wgm.ca
Bereket A. Berhe, B.A.Sc. - Geological Engineer
Bereket has over eight years international work experience as a field geologist and field engineer in the oil & gas and mining industry, working in Canada, Africa, the Middle East and Europe.
Email: bbereket@wgm.ca
David Power-Fardy, M.Sc., P.Geo. - Senior Associate Geologist
David is a geoscientist with over 30 years experience in mineral exploration, development and management in Canada, West Africa, Southeast Asia, Australia, China, the Caribbean, Mexico and the United States. He is familiar with ArcGIS, ArcView (3.x), MapInfo, AutoCAD, GeoSoft, Idrisi, ENVI, Log-II Systems and geographic information systems (GIS) databases (spatial and attribute data), as well as remote sensing methodologies and technologies. David designed, implemented and supervised exploration programs from reconnaissance through to drilling to limited underground development for precious (gold, silver and PGEs) and base metals.
Email: dpfardy@wgm.ca
Don Hains, MBA, P.Geo. - Senior Associate Industrial Minerals Specialist
Don Hains specializes in feasibility and mineral economics studies related to industrial minerals and resource development. He has held product research and market development positions with Fiberglas Canada Ltd. and Domtar Construction Materials. Don is thoroughly familiar with the requirements for industrial minerals used as fillers and reinforcement materials in plastics, paints, rubber and other products.
Email: dhains@wgm.ca
Erik Harkonen, P.Eng., MBA - Senior Associate Mining Engineer
Mr. Harkonen is a Professional Engineer and a principle of PEG Mining Inc. He has over 14 years experience in both consulting and operating mines in Canada. He has solid experience in open pit mine engineering matched iwth strong mine planning and scheduling skills.
Email: eharkonen@wgm.ca
Glenn Griesbach, P.Geo. - Senior Associate Geologist
Mr. Griesbach is a Canadian certified Professional Geologist with 25 years experience in all facets of mineral exploration including both underground and surface exploration projects, prospecting, geological mapping, diamond drilling, reverse circulation drilling, data compilation, license negotiation, project acquisition and project planning. Glenn Griesbach possesses a unique combination of expertise including intimate familiarity with many exploration techniques, mineralisation styles, ore deposit types, mining operations, and the research techniques to apply to the challenges of mineral exploration. Glenn has managed the day-to-day operations of projects in remote and difficult to support areas throughout Canada, Indonesia (since 1995), and Mongolia (since 2004). Mr. Griesbach has also worked in China and Iran (2001-2004). Mr. Griesbach is fully conversant in English, French, German and Indonesian, having lived 4 years in Germany, 25 years in Quebec and 10 years in Indonesia.
Email: ggriesbach@wgm.ca
Gordon Watts, B.A.Sc., P.Eng. - Senior Associate Mineral Economist
Gordon Watts is a professional engineer with over 45 years experience in the mining industry in exploration, development and operations, specializing in the economic analysis of mining ventures. His varied mining background also includes underground operations, exploration, mine design and feasibility studies. During the last 28 years, Mr. Watts has prepared over 250 financial models for clients in all of the mining provinces in Canada, the majority of the mining states in the United States, Mexico, most of South America, a number of countries in Africa, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, the CIS, South East Asia and Australia. He is also an expert in tax modeling, risk analysis and Monte Carlo simulations.
Email: gwatts@wgm.ca
Gordon Zurowski, P.Eng. - Senior Associate Mining Engineer
Mr. Zurowski is a Professional Engineer and principle of PEG Mining Inc. He has over 19 years experience as a mining engineer, having worked as a Senior Mining Engineer at various mining operations throughout North and South America. He is a member of the Professional Engineers of Saskatchewan and Ontario.
Email: gzurowski@wgm.ca
Harrison Cookenboo, Ph.D., P.Geo. - Senior Associate Geologist
Dr. Cookenboo has over 25 years of experience in the mineral industry with a solid background in exploring for diamonds, exploration planning and proprietary diamond property evaluations in British Columbia, Alberta, Northwest Territory, Nunavut Territory, Brazil, Congo, Ontario, and the United States. Dr. Cookenboo was responsible for geological evaluations of bulk samples of 2 to 10,000 tonnes extracted from promising kimberlites and leading to successful prefeasibility studies.
Email: hcookenboo@wgm.ca
Hassan Salehi, Ph.D. - Senior Associate Geologist
James (Hamish) McGregor, Ph.D., P.Eng. - Senior Associate Geologist
Dr. J.A. (Hamish) McGregor is one of Canada's most experienced consultants in Economic Geology and has more than 52 years of continuous employment in the international minerals industry. He is an authority on diamond related projects and has completed assignments in North and South America, Africa, and Asia. He has world-wide experience in exploration, ore reserves and valuations involving most commodities and a broad range of companies.
Email: jmcgregor@wgm.ca
Leo Lindinger, P.Geo. - Senior Associate Geologist
Mr. Lindinger has over 27 years varied experience in the mining industry. Owns and operates 3D data acquisition, database management and presentation systems using AutoDesk and Gemcom programs. Mr. Lindinger discovered the Goldstrike (Bizar) project, and the Broken Hill zinc-lead-silver property.
Email: llindinger@wgm.ca
Maria Boni, Ph.D. - Senior Associate Petrographer
With over thirty-five years experience in the academic world, Ms. Boni has published more than 130 scientific papers on base metal deposits in various European and international industry journals. In the last five years, M. Boni has mostly worked - both scientifically and professionally - on the geology and mineralogy of non-sulfide Zn deposits in several regions of the world.
Paul Dunbar, M.Sc., P.Geo - Senior Associate Geologist
Mr. Dunbar is an exploration geologist with more than 16 years of experience in precious metal, base metal and platinum group metal exploration projects in Archean Greenstone rocks in Canada, Ivory Coast, Ghana and Tanzania. He has held senior level management positions with Canadian junior mining companies and specializes in the design and management of gold exploration programs from the grass root stage to the resource development stage. He has extensive experience in due diligence, geological and geophysical interpretation, geological mapping, trenching and sampling, soil sampling and large scale diamond and RAB/RC drilling programs.
Email: pdunbar@wgm.ca
Pierre Desautels, B.Sc., P.Geo - Senior Associate Geologist
Mr. Desautels is a Professional Geologist and a principal of PEG Mining Inc. He has over 29 years international experience in mine geology and resource evaluation in gold, molybdenum, and base metal deposits. He is familiar with Gemcom resource modelling software, Paradox database, ArcGIS, Arcview, MapInfo, AutoCAD, NT Server and MS SQL server, Delphi programming and MS Access VBA front-end programming.
Email: pdesautels@wgm.ca
Pierre-Jean Lafleur, P.Eng. - Senior Associate Geological Engineer
Mr. Lafleur is a Professional Engineer with approximately 30 years of geological, geostatistical and mine planning experience in the international mining industry covering all commodity groups from base and precious metals to industrial minerals, and both open pit and underground mining. Mr. Lafleur has been involved in mineral deposit modeling and all aspects of mineral resource estimates. In completing consulting assignments, his client base has includes both junior mining companies and some of the largest companies in the business. Mr. Lafleur has developed implementation agreements involving some of the software including Geostat, GEMS, AutoCAD and GIS. He is proficient with Whittle software for open pit mine design and production planning.
Email: pjlafleur@wgm.ca
Pierre C. LaBreque, P.Eng. - Senior Associate Geologist
Mr. LaBrèque is a geological engineer with more than thirty years experience in mineral exploration internationally prospecting for gold, base metals, uranium and industrial minerals. With a solid background in exploration geophysics, geochemistry, economic geology, drilling, project management, mineral exploration and evaluation of property. Mr. LaBrèque participated in several international assignments as a consultant, supervisor and senior geologist.
Email: plabreque@wgm.ca
Rene Carapetian, P.Eng. - Associate Mining Engineer
René Carapetian has more than 12 years of experience in the mineral industry in open pit optimization and evaluation; short term and life-of-mine design and production scheduling; optimization of crusher and plant locations and processing plant throughput rates; mining and ancillary fleet estimation; mine cost analysis, including capital and operating cost estimates; benchmarking and feasibility studies; and due diligence studies. His experience covers a wide variety of deposit types and commodities, including gold, platinum, copper, zinc, diamonds, iron ore, vanadium, bauxite, limestone, chromite, phosphate and coal.
Email: rcarapetian@wgm.ca
Richard Risto, M.Sc., P.Geo. - Senior Associate Geologist
As an exploration geologist with 25 years of experience, Rick Risto has supervised drilling and sampling programs for gold, iron, base metals, rare earths and gemstones in Canada, Greenland, Saudi Arabia and Southeast Asia. Mr. Risto has also carried out mineral reserve audits and participated in WGM's property valuation practice. His area of special interest is lithogeochemistry in Archean greenstone belts, particularly the definition and characterization of gold and volcanic associated massive sulphide deposit alteration patterns.
Email: rristo@wgm.ca
Robert Didur, B.A.Sc., P.Eng. - Senior Associate Mining Engineer
Robert Didur is a Professional Engineer with over 34 years experience in mine engineering, planning and development, project planning and evaluation, civil construction and open pit mining in Arctic and northern environments. Mr. Didur is familiar with project study and evaluation requirements of world-class organizations, including the Canadian diamond mining industry.
Email: rdidur@wgm.ca
Robert Kuehnbaum, P.Geo, - Senior Associate Geologist
With over thirty-one years experience in mineral exploration, Mr. Kuehnbaum’s experience covers a wide variety of commodities in various parts of Canada, Brazil and Portugal. Mr. Kuehnbaum managed and conducted programs from regional scope to deposit definition stage. Other international familiarity in project evaluation and valuation in West Africa, Asia, South America, Europe and the United States.
Email: rkuehnbaum@wgm.ca
William Jarvis, - Senior Associate Geologist
Mr. Jarvis is a Geologist with more than 25 years experience in exploration for kimberlites and diamonds.
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"I was impressed with your professionalism throughout our engagement, and the economic and geological foundation of your recommended exploration program..."
Kabir Ahmed, President & CEO - Northwestern Mineral Ventures Inc.
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