Board & Management

Jeff Couch

Director

Based in London, England, Mr. Couch is a capital markets executive with deep experience in natural resources and emerging markets. He is CEO of Lydian Mining and Alufer Mining, both part of a global private equity firm managing several billions in assets. For 10 years he was Head of Investment Banking at BMO Capital Markets, Europe and he also held senior roles at Credit Suisse and Citigroup. He has substantial board experience on the Toronto and London Stock Exchanges and holds degrees in business and law.

Gary Cope

Director

Gary Cope has accumulated over 35 years of experience in Corporate Management and Strategy, with a specific emphasis on Public Company Finance. He arranged financing for the South Kemess project, and later became heavily involved with the negotiations and selling of the deposit to Royal Oak Mines. In the past 15 years, he has acted as a Senior Officer and Director for various publicly-held companies, such as St. Phillips Resources. Mr. Cope served as the President, CEO & Director of Orko Silver Corp., and was instrumental in negotiating and arranging the sale of Orko Silver to Coeur Mining Inc. in 2012. Mr. Cope served as President, CEO of Barsele Minerals Corp. and as director of Silver Viper Minerals Corp. until moving to the board in 2024.

Ross Wilmot

C.A., CFO & Director

Ross Wilmot is a Chartered Accountant who has provided public companies with senior financial management services for more than 50 years. As CFO, he offers exhaustive knowledge of reporting practices and requirements for public companies based in Canada and the USA. Mr. Wilmot has been involved in numerous business valuations and acquisitions, high tech start-ups and international mining operations.

Benjamin Gelber

Chief Technical Director

Mr. Gelber is a professional geologist with over 17 years industry experience specializing in orogenic gold systems, garnering a deep understanding of geological and structural controls on mineralization in orogenic systems at all scales, including developing and managing large and complex district to camp scale exploration programs. He was previously with Barrick Gold Corporation as Exploration Manager, Guyana. Prior to Barrick, Benjamin held the positions of Generative Exploration Manager, and Group Geology Manager with Asanko Gold Inc, now named Galiano Gold Inc.

Toby Pierce

Chairman & Director

Mr. Pierce is currently CEO and Director of TAG Oil Ltd, a TSX-listed oil and gas producer in Australasia.  Mr. Pierce has 25 years of geological and financial understanding within the resource sector.  He has been a founder, CEO or director of numerous private and public mining and natural resource companies including: Benchmark Metals, New Placer Dome Gold, Gold Line Resources, Crest Petroleum, North Country Gold, Brilliant Resources, Red Tail Metals, Kingfisher Metals and numerous shell companies in the Canadian and London markets. Mr. Pierce holds an MBA from the Rotman School of Business and a Bachelors of Science degree in Earth Sciences from the University of Victoria.

Marc Legault

Director of the Board

Mr. Marc Legault was recently appointed as Director of the Board. Marc is a geologist and was also a licensed professional engineer with over 40 years experience in the gold and base metals industry including 34 years working with Agnico Eagle Mines Limited (“Agnico”), where he held various exploration, operations, and management positions until he retired from Agnico in 2022 as a Senior Vice President. He spent time working on the Barsele project as well as the Oijarvi project, both of which are now First Nordic projects. His technical knowledge and experience with Agnico will be instrumental for First Nordic as it advances its flagship Barsele Project in Sweden in joint venture with Agnico.

Johannes Holzäpfel

Regional Director

Mr. Holzäpfel was appointed Regional Director of First Nordic. He is based in Stockholm, Sweden and currently serves as Exploration Manager of Europe for EMX Royalty Corp., where he has been for 7 years. Johannes was part of the original team that staked the Gold Line belt in 2016-17. He was an important part of the launch of Gold Line in 2021 and has tremendous experience in navigating tenure, community, and environmental processes in Sweden. He is a geologist and has close to 15 years of experience in the mineral exploration industry. During his career, Mr. Holzäpfel worked for Boliden AB also in Sweden, and Ivanhoe Mines Ltd. in Africa and Mongolia. Johannes graduated with a Master’s degree in Economic Geology from the Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen, Germany.

Adam Cegielski

Chief Development Officer

Mr. Cegielski has over 20 years of experience in the venture capital industry ranging from mineral exploration, technology, health care and education. He started his career developing an industrial mineral project in Uganda that he later sold to Rio Tinto. Mr. Cegielski was the founding director of Cayden Resources, which was sold to Agnico Eagle Mines for $205-million.

He is the founder, CEO & director of Binovi Technology Corp, a neurotechnology company driving higher levels of human performance through the use of Binovi technology.

Taj Singh

President, CEO & Director

Mr. Singh is a mining executive with over 22 years of experience in corporate development, capital markets, finance, project development, engineering, and operations. Most recently he was founding President and CEO of NOA Lithium Brines Inc. (“NOA”) and during his time the company successfully went public, carried out multiple funding rounds, and had significant exploration success at its flagship Rio Grande project in Salta, Argentina. Prior to his time at NOA, Singh was founding President and CEO at Mexico-focused developer Discovery Silver Corp (“Discovery”). During his 5-year tenure with the Discovery, Singh led the growth of the company to a market capitalization of over C$500M, representing +30X growth during his time there. From the 2016 go-public to 2020 Mr. Singh also served as Director / Lead Independent Director of the Board of GT Gold Corp. which was subsequently acquired by Newmont Corporation (C$393M). Mr. Singh is a Professional Engineer (P.Eng), a Chartered Professional Accountant (CPA), a Certified Management Accountant (CMA) and holds a Bachelor of Engineering degree (Metallurgy / Minerals Processing) and a Master of Engineering degree (Metallurgy).