Alain J. P. Belda
Director, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer
ALCOA

Alain Belda became chairman and chief executive officer of Alcoa in January 2001. He had been president and chief executive officer of the company since May 1999.

Mr. Belda joined Alcoa in 1969 at Alcoa Aluminio, Alcoa’s Brazilian affiliate. He held a number of financial and planning positions there until being named president of Alcoa Aluminio in 1979. He later assumed the additional responsibility for Alcoa’s Latin American operations. In 1982, Mr. Belda was elected a vice president of Alcoa, the parent company. He moved to Pittsburgh in 1994 as executive vice president, subsequently was elected vice chairman in 1995, to president and chief operating officer with responsibility for all operating activities in 1997, and to his most recent position as president and chief executive in 1999.

In addition to being chairman of Alcoa’s board of directors, Mr. Belda is a director of Citigroup Inc.  He serves on the Board of Trustees of The Conference Board, the world’s leading business membership and research organization, and is a Trustee of Brown University.  He is also an active member of the Business Council.

Mr. Belda was born in Meknes, French Morocco on June 23, 1943 and became a Brazilian citizen in 1982. He studied in Brazil and Canada and graduated from MacKenzie University in Brazil with a degree in business administration.

William Bulmer
Head of Mining Investments
International Finance Corporation (IFC)

William Bulmer is a Senior Manager in the International Finance Corporation (IFC) where he is head of the Mining Division.  IFC has a broad range of mining investments, including precious and base metals, minerals and coal, in a diverse global portfolio.  Bill has over 25 years’ finance experience in emerging markets and, during his time with IFC, has worked in several investment departments handling a variety of project, corporate and equity financings.  Prior to joining the Mining Division he was Associate Director in the Environment and Social Development Department.  In this role Bill helped IFC implement a sustainability strategy that moved from a rules based compliance approach to one of helping clients solve problems, manage risks and exploit opportunities.  He was part of IFC’s leadership team responsible for the new IFC Social and Environmental Performance Standards. Bill was educated in the UK with a BSc(hons) from the University of Reading and an MBA from Cranfield University.

Paul Mitchell
President
International Council on Mining & Metals

Paul Mitchell has been President of ICMM since September 2003. He is responsible for policy development on a broad range of issues including mining and its links to economic development, human rights and the environment. He represents ICMM on a number of international bodies, including the World Bank’s Advisory Committee on Extractive Industries and the boards of the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI) and the Mineral Economics and Management Society (MEMS). Prior to joining ICMM, Paul was CEO of CARE Australia, a member of CARE International, the world’s largest development and emergency assistance NGO operating in over 70 of the world’s poorest countries.

From 1994 to 1999 Paul was MD for Australasia of Environmental Resources Management (ERM), a leading international environmental and engineering services company. In the period from 1984 to 1994, he was joint Managing Director of Mitchell McCotter and Associates, an Australian based environmental consultancy focusing on the resources sector.

Paul was educated in Australia and the USA, and has qualifications in earth and engineering sciences, regional planning and business management. In 2004 he was admitted to the Order of Australia for services to the community, environmental resources management and planning.

Dr. Elena Clarici
Partner - CeCap
Treasurer - London's Association of Mining Analysts

Elena has worked in the financial markets in London and Milan since 1995 and has held a various positions across different market’s segments and industry sectors, principally in natural resources and renewable energy sectors. Elena started her career as an equity analyst with T. Hoare & Co.- Stockbrokers (present Canaccord Capital), with the responsibility for North American junior resource sector. In 1997, Elena joined ABN AMRO Bank where she was trained as an investment banker in international corporate finance department.

In 2004, Elena founded CeCap LLP, a specialist corporate finance boutique in London and in 2007 Commodity Energy Capital Limited, an investment company formed to acquire, develop and invest in commodity and energy related businesses.

Elena holds MPhil and PhD in Mining and Environmental Engineering from Imperial College, Royal School of Mines, London and BSc in Mining Engineering from University of Belgrade. She is also Treasurer of London based Association of Mining Analysts.

Dr. Eva Thorne
Director, Pact and Principal, Corporate Governance Solutions

Eva T. Thorne is a founder and principal of Corporate Governance Solutions and is a political risk specialist. She holds an undergraduate degree in history from Harvard University and a doctorate in political science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). She is also a partner at Deutch Consulting, where she advises clients on political risk and mitigation strategies. Ms. 
Thorne has done marketing research and analysis on the telecommunications sector of Brazil and executive coaching at the London Business School. She has lectured widely on issues of corporate governance and accountability, and political risk in the United States and Europe. She writes and publishes on political risk for business journals and conferences. Ms. Thorne is completing a book on the politics of reform at the World Bank and is working on another book project on indigenous communities and foreign investment. She has lived and worked all over Latin America and the Caribbean and speaks Spanish and Portuguese.  She is also a director of Pact, a Washington, DC-based international development organization that has partnerships with mining and oil companies.

Mamadou Barry
Acting Global Head and Senior Underwriter Oil & Gas, Mining & Chemicals

Mamadou Barry is a Senior Underwriter with MIGA, focusing on the Africa, Middle East and Asia regions. Since he joined MIGA, he has specialized in policy advisory
services, investment promotion and political risk insurance. Prior to joining MIGA, he worked as a geological engineer with multinational mining companies operating bauxite mines in Guinea. He subsequently joined the staff of the Mineral Exploration Division at the Ministry of Mines of Guinea. Upon completion of his graduate studies in the United States, he worked as an associate consultant for several natural resource consulting and engineering firms in Colorado. He concurrently conducted specialized executive training and capacity building assignments in the areas of finance, natural resource and environmental management and investment analysis. He also taught graduate-level finance and economics courses at the University of Colorado.

Mamadou joined the World Bank Group in 1993 and worked on industry and mining sector reform programs in developing countries. He was reassigned to MIGA in 1997, where he worked for both the technical assistance section and the guarantee arm.

Mamadou received a minerals engineering degree from the Institute of Mines
and Geology of Boké in Guinea, an M.Sc. and a Ph.D. in Mineral Economics from
the Colorado School of Mines. He also attended the Economics Institute of the
University of Colorado, and the Graduate School of Business of the University of
Denver where he specialized in Finance.

Norberto Roque Díaz de León
General Coordinador of Mining, Ministry of Economy

Norberto Roque Díaz de León is General Coordinator of Mining, of the Ministry of Economy, whose mandate is to coordinate all the entities related with mining to attract national and international investments, and to analyze and propose policies that will enhance competitiveness and employment in the mining sector.

Between 2004 and 2006 Mr. Roque served as Undersecretary of Agribusiness, in the Ministry of Agriculture, Secretaría de Agricultura, Ganadería, Desarrollo Rural, Pesca y Alimentación (SAGARPA), where he developed strategies to grant credit to the chain of value in agriculture and fishing activities. He also worked in the creation of 490 warrantee funds for the sector producers.
 
From 2000 to 2004 he worked as General Director of the Fideicomiso de Fomento Minero, Financial Institution of the Ministry of Economy, in which he was committed to enhance the attention to small and medium mining companies and also to generate added value to the mineral activities.

As Secretary of Economic Development in the Government of Guanajuato, Mr. Roque participated in the design and creation of the State System for Financing Development (1996-2000).

He was an active participant in the Program to Enhance Small and Medium Industries (Program de Apoyo Integral a la Pequeña y Mediana Industria) from 1980 to  1987, when was invited to work for Nacional Financiera where he carried on several positions until 1995.

Norberto Roque is a Chemical Engineer, he received a Masters Degree in Business Administration from the Instituto Tecnológico y de Estudios Superiores de Monterrey (ITESM). He has participated in diverse directive programs as the AD-2 from IPADE and diverse seminars in Harvard University. He has also been a guest speaker in diverse international forums in Spain, Italy and Japan, among others.

Jean N. Weaver
Regional Specialist for Central America/ South  America/Caribbean International Programs
US Geological Survey

Ms. Jean N. Weaver has worked as a geologist and an international program coordinator for the U.S. Geological Survey for the past 27 years. Early on in her career, she worked for the Coal Branch in Denver, Colorado as a stratigrapher/sedimentologist, focusing on the depositional environments of Tertiary coalfields throughout the Rocky Mountains. She  also contributed this expertise to two USAID-funded projects  in Costa Rica and Haiti. Since 1993, she has served as  Chief of Latin America for the International Programs office, at the USGS headquarters office in Reston,Virginia.

Ms. Weaver represents USGS scientific expertise to Latin American counterparts  in order to help promote and develop collaborative activities within Central America, South America and the Caribbean. Ms. Weaver interacts on a routine basis with the international donor community (World Bank, Inter-American Development Bank, US Agency for International Development), academia, and the private sector, in an effort to develop cooperative agreements with international governmental institutions and to promote collaboration in the geosciences.

Ms. Weaver developed a broad international perspective and fluency in English, French and Spanish having spent her formative years in Cuba, Uruguay, Iran and the United States. She graduated from Vassar College with a BA in Geology.

Cristiane Ronza
Social and Environmental Risk Assessment
Banco Real ABN Amro Bank

Cristiane Ronza. Biologist, specialist in Socio and Environmental Risk - ABN AMRO Real, in charge of Equator Principles project assessment for Latin America and social and environmental risk analysis of national and multinational corporate clients, and also acting in the development of strategies for sustainable investments. Has a Master´s Degree in Environmental Policy from the University of Campinas - Unicamp and has a post-graduate degree in environmental management from the University of Technology in Dresden, Germany(UNEP/UNESCO). Sixteen years of experience in environmental assessment, having worked in both the public and the private sectors of mining, energy and others infrastructure sectors.

Karr McCurdy
Standard Chartered Bank
Managing Director, Global Head of Metals and Mining

Karr McCurdy is currently the Global Head of Metals and Mining at Standard Chartered Bank based in New York City. Headquartered in London, Standard Chartered PLC is listed on both the London Stock Exchange and the Stock Exchange of Hong Kong and is ranked in the top 25 among FTSE-100 companies, by market capitalization. It has a history of over 150 years in banking and has an extensive global network of over 1,200 branches in 56 countries in the Asia Pacific Region, South Asia, the Middle East, Africa, the United Kingdom and the Americas.

Karr was named Global Head of Metals and Mining for Standard Chartered Bank (SCB) in March 2006. He is responsible for all strategic development and marketing efforts related to the Bank’s metals and mining clients.

Prior to joining SCB and for the last 21 years he played a similar role at Citigroup and worked as a relationship manager for basic industries clients for Mellon Bank and Wells Fargo. Karr earned an MBA degree from Thunderbird, and worked as a geologist in Latin America for 8 years. He also has a BSC degree in Geological Sciences from the University of Michigan.

Rubén Chávez González
UNEP Finance Initiative LA Task Force
& Director Credit Portfolio Management and Special Assets/HSBC Mexico

With undergraduate studies in Economics and a Master’s degree in Finance, Ruben began his banking career in 1993 in Mexico City working as a CMB Relationship Manager and later as Regional Head of Workout for Banco Internacional. In 2002 when HSBC acquired Banco Internacional, Ruben was appointed Head of Credit Approval for the Metropolitan Region. In 2004 he was named Head of Credit Portfolio Management and additionally in 2006 he took on the Special Assets area. He is responsible for proactively administering the credit risk of the retail and wholesale loan portfolios. In 2004 Ruben was designated as one of the twelve HSBC Sustainability Risk Managers in the world. He has been instrumental in creating and expanding the Sustainable Development Area for HSBC Mexico and implementing HSBC Sustainability Risk Policies throughout Latin America.

Sharon Maharg
WestLB AG
Director, Global Origination, Sustainability Management Americas

Sharon Maharg is the Regional Head of Sustainability Management for Latin America and a Director in Global Origination and Syndication, Capital Markets at WestLB, New York. Since WestLB’s Sustainability Management Department was established in April 2004, Sharon has been actively involved and was initially responsible for the Americas. Sharon now focuses solely on Latin America and works closely with the Structured & Corporate Finance business units to ensure that environmental and social risks in transactions are accurately assessed and well managed. She has assessed compliance with the Equator Principles for many large scale Energy and Infrastructure projects led by WestLB, including the El Cajon and La Yesca Hydroelectric projects in Mexico.  

Sharon is a member of the Equator Principles Financial Institutions Steering Committee and is the Chairperson of the EPFI Best Practice Working Group. In addition, she is a member of the UNEP FI Biodiversity & Ecosystem Services Workstream and the UNEP FI North America Task Force.

Sharon came to WestLB in 1991 to establish and manage the Trade Services Group, WestLB’s first International Trade related business unit in the Americas. From 1997 to 2004, she focused on the structuring and execution of the Structured Finance business, initially within Export Finance and then within Oil & Gas Project Finance, primarily devoted to Latin America.

Previous to joining WestLB, Sharon established the International Department at a subsidiary bank of
The Bank of New York.

Shawn Miller
Citi
Director, Environmental and Social Risk Management

Shawn Miller is Citi's global Director of Environmental and Social Risk Management in its Markets and Banking Unit based in New York City. Mr. Miller advises senior Citi management and staff on environmental and social risk issues; is responsible for internal implementation of the Equator Principles and its broader Environmental and Social Risk Management Policy; and, leads policy development and training efforts, and has been lead co-drafter of the newly revised Equator Principles. Prior to joining Citigroup in 2004, he was employed for 8.5 years with the International Finance Corporation (IFC), the private sector investment arm of the World Bank Group, as a social development specialist where he focused on environmental and social policy development; conducted social due diligence on IFC investment projects in the extractive industries and hydro sector; lead development of IFC's public consultation Good Practice Manual and Community Development Guide; and, was the first IFC staff member dedicated to advising on and managing IFC’s relationships with the environmental advocacy/NGO community. Shawn has has received multiple commendations from the Financial Times Sustainable Banking Awards for his leadership in the field. He holds graduate degrees from The Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs of Syracuse University (NY).

Tiejun Wei
Ministry of Land and Resources of China
Deputy Director-General of the Law Center

Mr. Tiejun Wei was born in 1964 in north China. Dr. Wei is Deputy Director-General of the Law Center of the Ministry of Land and Resources of China. He is currently responsible for revising the Mineral Resources Law of the PRC (Mining Act). He has been working for the Chinese government about 20 years and researching on legal reform for mining industry of China. Professor Wei also teaches mineral resources law at Tsinghua University, China University of Geosciences and Wuhan University. Mr. Wei answers varied questions from foreign investors who have mining properties or operations in China.

In the past decade, Dr. Wei has paid visits to Australia, Canada, Greece, Italy, Japan, Korea, Span, Singapore, UK and USA on the subjects of mining laws, exploration technology, mineral trade, reserves appraisal and mining financing. Mr. Wei spoke to international meetings to introduce and discuss mining policy and legislation of China, including PDAC in Toronto, Mining Congress in London and China Mining in Beijing.

Education and Degree:
2002-03, Queen’s University Departments of Mining and of Geology, Mining Financing
2001-05, China University of Geosciences (Beijing), Ph.D. in Mineral Economics
1995-98, Beijing University Law Department, Master of Laws
1986-89, China University of Geosciences (Wuhan), M.S. in Mineralogy
1982-86, Wuhan College of Geology, B.S. in Structural Geology

Dr. Hernan Martinez Torres
Ministry of Mines and Energy
Colombia

Dr. Martinez Torres took office on July 31, 2006 as the new head of the portfolio of Mines and Energy. He is a 65 year old Cartagena, married and father of three children. Course studies in Chemical Engineering at the Universidad Pontificia Bolivariana, with a specialization in management oil in North Western University.

Martinez Torres was President of Intercor for 16 years , a subsidiary of ExxonMobil for the development of coal mining complex of Cerrejón Zona Norte.

He also served as President of Exxon Mobil Colombia, Manager of Corporate Planning Esso Colombian and member of board of directors of the University of the North in Barranquilla.

Before assuming as the new minister, he came to serve as a member of the board of directors of several companies in both the public and the private sectors.

Martinez Torres was representative of the President of the Republic on the board of directors of the National Hydrocarbon Agency (ANH), Chairman of the board of Carton de Colombia and member of the boards of ISA, Transelca and Investment South America.