Amazing Journey from Economic Geologist to Portfolio Manager

I grew up in mining towns. My dad did his time as an apprentice underground in copper mines in Australia, and my granddad, too. It's kind of natural I gravitated towards a career in metals and mining. I liked solving puzzles, and I was naturally curious, so geology was a natural fit.

What I did a little bit different, perhaps, was I was fortunate to have lots of different opportunities early. It would be wrong to call it a plan. It was more about just saying yes to things. But what it meant was I had the chance to work in open-cut mines, underground mines, doing geostatistics and building resource estimates, exploration, taking different projects all the way from discovery through the studies to show their economic viability through production.

I ended up working for some of the world's biggest miners, like Newmont, helping to run junior explorers, ultimately doing a lot of corporate development work analyzing other deposits as potential acquisitions. So I ended up as a Renaissance geologist with a broad set of skills, and I didn't know it at the time, but it was actually very well suited for analyzing metals and mining investments. I've been fortunate to be able to hone that here with the team at Sprott for the last seven or eight years as a portfolio manager and an investment strategist.

If you'll indulge me, the team that we have as co-PMs at Sprott is very complimentary. We've got Shri Kaka, who's just a wizard on financial analysis and markets, and Maria Smirnova, who's one of the world's authorities on silver markets, if you ask me. I work directly with luminaries like Eric Sprott. We've got a very well-put-together team that I think is one of the best anywhere.