Wednesday Opening & Lunch Keynote

Doris Hiam-Galvez

Doris is a Chemical Engineer with a PhD in Metallurgy from the Université de Liege, Belgium with broad senior level experience in both technical organizations & developing new business globally in the mining/metals, energy and infrastructure sectors. Achieved objectives by successfully building multidiscipline teams across not only the company but also other companies.

She is currently Senior Advisor to Hatch. She ran Hatch Peru until 2012 and Hatch Europe until 2017, and over 15 years created new and innovative opportunities that expanded the business in new regions (Australia, South America, Europe & North America) by understanding customer needs, anticipating future needs and creating new services to meet them.

Before joining Hatch, she was the CTO for Novelis, where she was a key member of a corporate leadership team participating in all aspects of the business including financial performance, operations, capital investment, mergers/ acquisitions, organizational development and social responsibility. She was Board Director of the Canada UK Chamber of Commerce in London.

She developed a concept called “Designing Sustainable Prosperity (DSP)”; a topic that is attracting interest from mining companies and investors. This approach represents a new way of doing business which, at the end of a mine life, leaves a positive sustainable economy with an improved environment and quality of life.

Kurt House

Kurt is the CEO of KoBold Metals, an AI-driven mineral exploration company that combines the world’s leading mineral explorers with an outstanding team of data scientists and software engineers hailing from Apple, Google, and other leading Silicon Valley companies.

Throughout his career, Kurt has been an entrepreneur at the interface of technology and natural resources. He previously founded a carbon sequestration and enhanced oil recovery business as well as a direct investment platform to acquire North American natural gas assets based on proprietary technology that more accurately forecast natural gas production from hydraulically fractured wells.

Kurt has been an Adjunct Professor in Stanford University’s Energy Resources Engineering Department since 2015. Previously, he was a KAUST Research Fellow at MIT where he studied the chemistry and physics of CO2 capture and storage. He received his Ph.D. from Harvard University for his work in applied math and earth science and his B.A. in physics from the Claremont Colleges. Kurt has also worked in private equity and corporate advising for Bain & Company.