Julien Paluku Kahongya currently serves as the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s (DRC) Minister of Industry, a post he has held since September 2019. As Minister of Industry, Paluku oversees cooperation and investment opportunities in industry in the DRC. Paluku is a pioneer of creating a local battery value chain in the DRC and supports efforts directed at achieving these goals. Prior to assuming this position, Paluku, an experienced politician, was the governor of North Kivu in the DRC.

Paluku was also mayor of Beni, DRC where he initiated different infrastructure projects. Prior to this, Paluku was mayor of Butembo, where he also focused on infrastructure, including building a town hall, public parking, a bridge and repairing roads.

Paluku holds a master’s degree in Community Health from the Free University of the Great Lakes Region in Butembo, DRC.

Harry Fisher is a Senior Battery Metals Analyst and leads CRU’s cobalt market analysis. He has been at CRU since 2015, during which time he has covered a variety of commodity markets and given strategic advice to a broad spectrum of CRU’s client. Harry is part of CRU’s Battery Metals team and he currently leads research and analysis of cobalt, lithium ion batteries and electric vehicles. He is based in Brisbane, Australia.

David Brocas is Chair of the Cobalt Institute’s Executive Committee and Head Cobalt Trader at Glencore.

Colin Hamilton is a Managing Director and Commodities Analyst for BMO Capital Markets. Based in London, he leads BMO’s market intelligence and price forecasting efforts across base metals, bulk commodities, precious metals and battery raw materials. With a background as a metallurgist, and a strong focus on China and global trade flows, and deep subject knowledge, Colin’s regular publications offer value-added insight on industry developments. Previously he headed up Macquarie’s commodities research team, and before that spent time at CRU in London where he was responsible for steelmaking, iron ore and metallurgical coal cost services. 

Dr Yanchen Wang is a well-known analyst in the global commodity industry. His areas of expertise include base metals market, coal and power industry, carbon emission market. In recent years, he has extended his research into the battery metals markets. He has visited more than 100 base metals assets around the world. Dr Yanchen Wang has more than 16 years commodity market research experience.

Yanchen has a PhD in Engineering from Chinese Academy of Sciences.

Key responsibilities include responsible sourcing, decarbonization and product sustainability.

The Honourable Paul Kabuswe serves as the Minister of Mines and Minerals Development in the Government of Zambia. By background, he is a businessman and a political scientist, who holds a Bachelor of science degree in Politics and International Relations. 

He was appointed Minister of Mines in September 2021 and is a member of parliament for Chililabombwe, in Zambia’s northern copperbelt. 

Kim Shedd is a mineral commodity specialist for the U.S. Geological Survey

Joe has held senior management roles with PricewaterhouseCoopers, Five Oceans Asset Management, Bankers Trust, and Deutsche Bank. He has managed operational reviews and strategic option assessments across mining, processing, railway, and port facilities throughout Australia, North America, and Europe. In addition, Joe has worked in equities and investment research, focused on mining, minerals processing, energy storage, and battery technologies. Joe has managed investments in the global resources and minerals processing industries, including the management of turnaround projects supporting corporate targets, mergers, and divestment activities.

Michael Hollomon is the Commercial Director of US Strategic Metals

Caspar holds the position of Chief Data Officer at Benchmark Mineral Intelligence, a London-based leading
research and consultancy firm focusing on the lithium-ion battery to EV supply chain. Caspar leads a team that collects and assess sensitive market price data on lithium, graphite, cobalt, and nickel for use in industry supply contracts and negotiations. As a result, Benchmark is most famous for setting the lithium industry’s reference price and is the world’s leading Price Reporting Agency (PRA) for the world’s battery supply chain. At Benchmark, Caspar regularly travels to active mines and processing plants in many different countries with a specialist focus on China. He is regularly invited to give market-focused presentations around the world including Canada, China, Australia, and the United States. In his role at Benchmark, Caspar has advised some of the
world’s leading institutional investors and mining companies.

Mitchell Smith is the Founder, CEO and Director of Global Energy Metals Corp. A publicly listed company providing shareholders investment exposure to the battery metals supply chain through a growing portfolio of jurisdictionally safe exploration critical mineral projects in close proximity to end-use application. Mitchell is Director of the Battery Metal Association of Canada, a trade organization of entrepreneurs, explorers, developers and producers of battery metals and materials, who have joined together to support a rapidly changing energy landscape leading an effort to ensure Canada fully captures the abundant economic potential of its massive resources through the responsible and sustainable growth of Canada’s battery metals supply chain.

Mitchell is an important stakeholder and board member for several private and public natural resource companies having over 15 years of executive leadership, entrepreneurship and capital markets experience at all stages of the junior mining lifecycle, and is experienced with start-ups and mature companies in diverse industries both private and public. Through his network, knowledge and passion for the natural resource space is presently leveraging his unique skills to enable and strengthen awareness around the battery and energy metals sector. His experience and strong understanding of the battery supply chain has resulted in successfully identifying and negotiating the acquisition of multi-jurisdictional mining exploration and development projects in North America, Europe, and Australia. Through his network of strong international relationships, Mitchell was responsible for establishing offtake and EPC contracts with leading Chinese specialized lithium-ion battery cathode material companies that are suppliers to some of the world’s largest battery manufacturers.

Vidiye Tshimanga Tshipande is the Special Advisor for Strategic Matters to President Félix Tshisekedi of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). As a close adviser to the president, Tshimanga is instrumental in executive decision-making and is an advocate of the DRC in the global political economy. Tshimanga was instrumental in the creation of the Entreprise Générale du Cobalt, a Congolese government-initiated program which supports the commercialisation of responsibly sourced artisanal cobalt, as well as its regulatory body ARECOMES. Tshimanga concurrently serves as the president of the Dynamic Congo United political party (DCU), a small party which backs the president’s agenda. Tshimanga previously served as the spokesperson for Tshisekedi’s 2018 presidential campaign.

Prior to joining the PRI, Bettina worked for DNV in London, advising multinational companies on their sustainability strategy, stakeholder engagement, research and best practice, with a particular focus on labour and human rights and ways business can implement the UN Guiding Principles of Business and Human Rights.

Bettina holds an MSc in Development Management from London School of Economics and Political Science, and a BA in Geography from King’s College London.

Benjamin Katz has been a Policy Analyst for responsible mineral supply chains at the OECD’s Centre for Responsible Business Conduct since early 2019. His work at the OECD focusses on sourcing of cobalt and battery materials, mineral sourcing from Central Africa and measuring the uptake and impact of the OECD Due Diligence Guidance for Responsible Mineral Supply Chains. He has over eight years of experience working on responsible sourcing of minerals and natural resource governance in the African Great Lakes Region and beyond. Prior to the OECD, Ben spent four years implementing responsible sourcing projects related to due diligence, traceability, and formalisation of artisanal and small-scale mining mainly in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. 

Anna Stancher is a Project Manager at the Responsible Minerals Initiative (RMI) of the Responsible Business Alliance where she supports RMI’s standard development and implementation with a focus on ESG assessments in mineral supply chains.

She has over ten years working experience as a sustainability expert in a variety of industries and geographies. Prior to her work at RMI, she was R&D Manager at amfori, a business association dedicated to promoting human rights and environmental due diligence in global supply chains. Previously, she held technical advisory and project management roles on supply chain development at the German Development Cooperation (GIZ) and the United Nation Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO).

He is CEO of TDI Sustainability, and he chairs and serves on several boards and expert panels for standard-setting organizations, NGOs and private companies. Dr Carter is an expert on corporate voluntary standard-setting and certification schemes, value-chain development from producer to product, and a metals-industry expert.

As Vice President, Commercial, Michael will have overall responsibility for marketing of the Company’s refined cobalt sulfate production to electric vehicle (EV) manufacturers and battery cell makers. He will also be responsible for marketing recycled cobalt, nickel, lithium and other battery materials produced by First Cobalt’s Canadian refinery under a proposed Phase 2 expansion to refine black mass recovered from end-of-life lithium-ion batteries.

Craig is a passionate and highly experienced ESG professional. He is responsible for developing Britishvolt’s sustainability/ESG strategies and reporting for all activities, a crucial pillar to overall business success. His previous roles include as an environmental and planning regulator, sustainability consultant and manufacturing business lead both in the UK and various locations across the globe.

Craig has worked most recently in the automotive sector developing strategies and systems to support global sustainability, compliance and reporting around Net Zero at Jaguar Land Rover. He led integration of sustainability within JLR’s new plants in Brazil and Slovakia, other global operations, and worked with suppliers on sustainability ambitions. Prior to this he worked with international clients as a manufacturing business sector leader managing a cross functional team leading on sustainability, environmental compliance including assessing investment opportunities for banks and due diligence transactional support.

Craig is a Chartered Water and Environmental Manager, Chartered Scientist and Chartered Environmentalist.

Chris Heron is Communication and Public Affairs Director at Eurometaux, the European metals association, representing Europe’s full metals value chain. Chris joined Eurometaux in 2014, after previously working for the European battery industry association and public affairs consultancies.

He coordinates Eurometaux’s overall public affairs and communication programme, including outreach to EU institutions. He recently lead a “Metals for Clean Energy” project with KU Leuven to map the metals requirements of Europe’s clean energy goals.

Dr Yanchen Wang is a well-known analyst in the global commodity industry. His areas of expertise include base metals market, coal and power industry, carbon emission market. In recent years, he has extended his research into the battery metals markets. He has visited more than 100 base metals assets around the world. Dr Yanchen Wang has more than 16 years commodity market research experience.

Yanchen has a PhD in Engineering from Chinese Academy of Sciences.