Our Team
David Hennigar
Chairman
Mr. Hennigar is one of Atlantic Canada's leading business people. He is Chairman and Director of several other public and private traded companies.
Francis MacKenzie
CEO
President and Director of Grand River Ironsands since 2007; a company whose majority shareholder is Metalo Manufacturing Inc. (CSE:MMI) of which Mr. MacKenzie is also the President.
Mr. MacKenzie is a builder and leader of public companies, and has operated several businesses.
He was a senior official in municipal and provincial governments in economic development roles, including heading up Investment and Trade for the Province of Nova Scotia. He was Leader of a provincial political party.
He has raised over $40 million for companies he has been involved over the past 15 years and remains active in capital raising and financial markets.
He holds an EMBA ('92) from Saint Mary's University and a BBA from St. Francis Xavier University
Bertan Atalay
COO
Bertan Atalay, P.Eng., MBA, MSC, has helped in the structuring of more than $4.5bn in limited and non-resource project finance and helped in the raising of more than $150mn in start-up, seed and working capital equity.
Mr. Atalay was an engineer at Golder Associates Ltd. of Canada, after which he had more than 25 years in infrastructure project engineering, development and financing globally, holding various professional positions at Shell in Amsterdam, Enron in London and Northland Power in Toronto
He co-founded Europe's first independent underground gas storage firm.
He is a Professional Civil Engineer with a Masters of Applied Science awarded by University of Toronto. He completed the MBA program at University of British Columbia; and, he is an exchange scholar of the London Business School.
Kevin Kemper
VP Business Development
Kevin Kemper has 7+ years of experience as an investment banker advising and financing metals/mining companies.
Mr Kemper was most recently Vice President in Rothschild’s North American mining group with an emphasis on arranging project financing for greenfield projects and M&A advisory.
His experience includes advising:
- Antofagasta on the financing of its US$1.7bn Antucoya copper project in Chile
- Kinross Gold on its US$7.1bn acquisition of Red Back Mining
- Victoria Gold Corp on the project financing for its US$500m Eagle gold project
Paul Snelgrove
Director
Businessman in Happy Valley-Goose Bay, Chair of Happy Valley-Goose Bay Airport Corporation.
Jean-Marc MacKenzie
Director
Corporate Lawyer and Senior VP of major healthcare corporation working with large mining companies and corporations.
Anastasia Qupee
Director
Ms. Qupee is the former Grand Chief of the Innu First Nation and co-chair of the Innu Development Limited Partnership.
Prote Poker
Director
Innu First Nation appointee. Mr. Poker is the former Grand Chief of the Innu Nation.
Lina Tannous
Corporate Secretary
Over 15 years of a diverse legal background as a paralegal supplemented by a foreign law degree from London, UK.