Management
Leaders with a proven track record of gemstone and gold mining success.
Leaders with a proven track record of gemstone and gold mining success.
Our management team has the knowledge and experience required to bring Montana sapphire dreams into reality.
Dr. Barron is an exploration geologist with over 32 years’ experience in the mining sector. He began his research in gemstones back in the early 1990’s, soon after diamonds were discovered in Canada, and at one time was a writer for the Rapaport Diamond Report. Self-taught expertise in diamonds led to contracts in Canada, USA, Venezuela, Brazil, Guyana and South Africa in pursuit of gemstones. He discovered an industrial garnet deposit while on holiday in Montana in 1993, and during that trip was first introduced to Montana Sapphires. For the following twenty years Dr. Barron visited Montana once or twice each year, though he continued to work and explore worldwide.
In 2001, he privately founded Ecuador gold explorer Aurelian Resources Inc., which he listed on the TSX-V in 2003 and went on to make the colossal Fruta del Norte gold discovery in 2006 (13.7 M oz Au). He is the founder, Director, and major shareholder of uranium explorer U3O8 Corp. (UWE:TSX), and Director of Firestone Ventures Inc. (FV:TSX-V). Dr. Barron is presently President and CEO of Aurania Resources Ltd. (ARU:TSX-V). At the PDAC convention in March 2008 he was awarded the Thayer Lindsley International Discovery Award for his role in the discovery of the Fruta del Norte gold deposit and he was also jointly named the Northern Miner’s Mining Man of the Year 2008. He holds a Ph.D. in Geology from the University of Western Ontario and a BSc. (Hons) in Geology from the University of Toronto.