Leadership
Board of Directors
Ron Dewhurst
Chairman, Independent Director
Ron Dewhurst has held a number of Board positions, including directorships at Australian United Investment Company, IOOF Holdings Ltd, Orchard Petroleum Ltd, Rhinomed Ltd, One Vue Holdings, The National Gallery of Victoria and The Breast Cancer Network of Australia. Over the course of his career, Mr. Dewhurst has held many senior leadership roles in the US and Australia, most recently serving as Executive Vice President and Head of Global Investment Managers for Legg Mason Inc. Prior to joining Legg Mason, Mr. Dewhurst’s previous roles included terms as Chief Executive Officer of ANZ McCaughan Ltd., Managing Director at IOOF Holdings Ltd, and Head of Americas for JP Morgan Asset Management.
Graham Birch
Chair, Audit and Risk Management Committee, Independent Director
Dr. Graham Birch started his career in 1984 as a mining equity analyst with the London based offices of Panmure Gordon. He then moved to Kleinwort Benson Securities and then Ord Minnett. In 1993, Dr. Birch joined Mercury Asset Management as a portfolio manager in the mining and gold sectors. Mercury Asset Management was subsequently taken over by Merrill Lynch Investment Managers and then BlackRock. In 1999, Dr. Birch was promoted to Managing Director and Head of the Natural Resources Investment Team at BlackRock in London, a position he held until 2010. This team was ultimately responsible for US$50 billion of investments in Gold & Mining, Energy & Alternative Energy, Agriculture and Commodities. Dr. Birch has direct fund management experience in long only funds, hedge funds and income funds – all within the natural resources sector. Dr. Birch left BlackRock in 2010 to pursue his interests in agriculture and is the owner of a 2,100 acre farming operation in Dorset. He is currently a non-executive director of Hochschild Mining; a mid-tier silver and gold mining company. Until 2018, he was a non-executive director of ETF Securities – a pioneer in the area of precious metals ETFs. Dr. Birch has a PhD in Mining Geology from the Royal School of Mines, Imperial College London.
Barbara Connolly Keady
Chair, Governance, Sustainability and Nominating Committee, Independent Director
Barbara Connolly Keady has over 15 years of finance and asset management industry experience and currently serves as Director of Marketing for Ceres Partners, a large agricultural asset manager in the United States. Previously she was a research analyst at Southport Management, a convertible bond hedge fund based in Connecticut. Prior to that, Ms. Keady worked as an associate in the Private Wealth Management group at Morgan Stanley. She started her career at Bankers Trust Company in their fixed income sales department. Ms. Connolly Keady received a B.S. from the McIntire School of Commerce at the University of Virginia and an MBA in Finance from Columbia University. She has served as a Director on the board of Sprott Focus Trust (FUND) since 2015 and was also a Director on the boards of the Sprott Gold Equity Fund, the Sprott Gold Miners ETF, and the Sprott Junior Gold Miners ETF.
Judith W. O’Connell
Chair, Compensation Committee, Independent Director
Judith O’Connell has over 33 years of financial services experience and is currently the Managing Partner and Chief Executive Officer of Champlain Investment Partners, LLC, a position she has held since September 17, 2004. She is also a member of the firm’s Operating Committee. Prior to founding Champlain in 2004, she was a Senior Vice President at NL Capital Management, Inc. where she directed client service, marketing, and operations for the firm’s institutional business. Before this, she was the Director of Mutual Funds/Intermediary Markets at Dresdner RCM Capital Management in San Francisco, California, where she had overall responsibility for business management, operations, marketing, sales, and product development functions for the mutual funds. Early in her career, she held management positions within investment operations, compliance, and treasury at The Boston Company. Ms. O’Connell graduated with a Bachelor of Science degree in Finance from the University of Massachusetts Amherst and earned her Master of Business Administration from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Dinaz Dadyburjor
Independent Director
Dinaz Dadyburjor is a senior executive with 30 years of experience in the asset management industry. She is a seasoned business leader working for large global organizations across multiple business functions including finance, investment fund operations, risk management and governance. Most recently, Ms. Dadyburjor was a Managing Partner at Brookfield Asset Management where she had various global leadership roles in finance, investment fund operations, client service, risk management and ESG. Prior to that, she was a senior executive at Mackenzie Financial (now part of IGM) overseeing fund finance, operations and technology. Ms. Dadyburjor has extensive experience with corporate boards as a member of management and with non-profit boards as board and audit committee member.
Catherine Raw
Independent Director
Catherine Raw has an extensive background in mining operations and finance, as well as asset management. She is currently Chief Development Officer at BHP. Ms. Raw was formerly Managing Director of SSE Thermal (a business unit of SSE plc) and previously held roles at Barrick Gold Corporation as Chief Operating Officer for North America and Chief Financial Officer. Prior to joining Barrick, Ms. Raw was co-manager of BlackRock’s flagship mining funds. Ms. Raw holds the chartered financial analyst designation, an undergraduate degree in natural sciences from Cambridge University and an MSc in mineral project appraisal from Imperial College, London.
Whitney George
CEO, Sprott Inc., Non-independent Director
Whitney George was named Chief Executive Officer of Sprott Inc. in 2022. He is also a Senior Portfolio Manager at Sprott Asset Management USA. Mr. George joined Sprott in 2015 and previously spent 23 years in senior roles at Royce & Associates LLC ("Royce") in New York. He was Co-Chief Investment Officer of Royce from 2009 to 2013 and played a key role in the firm’s growth and evolution into a leading U.S. small-cap manager with peak assets of more than US$40 billion. At Sprott, Mr. George is also senior portfolio manager of Sprott Focus Trust (FUND), a closed-end equity investment fund that seeks to provide long-term growth of capital through a focused portfolio of value stocks of companies across all market capitalizations. Prior to joining Royce, Mr. George held positions with Dominick & Dominick, Inc., WR Lazard & Laidlaw, Inc., Laidlaw, Adams & Peck and Oppenheimer & Co. Inc. Whitney holds a bachelor's degree from Trinity College.