YMP celebrates 2024 Eira Thomas and Peter Munk award winners

Scott Berdahl a Yukon-based geologist with a lifetime of experience prospecting in the bush and Ella Cullen, a New Zealander now living in Portugal who co-founded a business focused on traceability in mine supply, were honoured at this year’s Young Mining Professionals’ (YMP) awards in Toronto on Monday night.

At a downtown Toronto restaurant, the two, who were named the winners of the YMP Peter Munk and Eira Thomas awards, respectively, in March, accepted the honours in front of an industry crowd of a few dozen.

‘Team over self’

Berdahl, CEO of Snowline Gold (TSXV: SGD; US-OTC: SNWGF) was chosen for the award for leading Snowline through its successful exploration of the Valley target in Yukon.

He quipped that after YMP repeatedly told him he won the award, he thought it was a trick.

“I thought this was one of the Nigerian prince things,” he said. “I’m starting to come around with the idea that it might not be a ruse, but I’m still cautiously guarding my bank account information.”

He credited factors mostly outside of himself for the award, starting with the geology of the Valley. An initial resource for the project, released in June, showed the deposit is one of the largest in size and grade across several projects in the Tombstone gold belt that runs under the territory.  

“There are a lot of good teams out there doing a lot of good work, we just happened to tap into a phenomenal orebody out there. I think that’s a big part of why I’m standing here,” he said.

Berdahl also praised Snowline’s team for its success, singling out board chair Craig Hart, whom he said “cornered him” at a Yukon geoscience event several years ago and encouraged him to stay in the mining industry. After Berdahl started Snowline, he invited Hart to chair the company in 2021.

“He’s done a lot in helping to steer our company down a good path,” Berdahl said.

Finally, while his wife tended to their young children at the ceremony, Berdahl thanked his family for their support. Berdahl’s father Ron, a self-taught prospector, first took Scott out to look for rocks in the Yukon at the age of eight.

“I’m always very impressed with first-generation explorers. I’m grateful to have been set on this path,” he said. “This was just a little project to try to sell some mineral properties that I had, and it’s obviously blown up in a big way, and I couldn’t be here without that family support as well.”

‘Making people visible’

Ella Cullen, co-founder and chief marketing officer of Minespider, is being celebrated by YMP for her work with the traceability platform to help ensure mineral supply chains are transparent and compliant.

Cullen said she’s very grateful for her team who have supported her over the last six years after they launched Minespider, based on the idea that every mined mineral should have a passport so its origins can be traced.

“This venture is more than tracking minerals from A to B,” she said. “It’s more than streamlining compliance or reducing carbon emissions. For me, Minespider has always been about making people visible.”

Cullen explained that celebrating women in mining comes down to recognizing the roles and circumstances of individual women in the industry.

“Who is this woman mining? In my experience, she’s a mother in Uganda cooking food for some guys that are working down the shafts. She’s a pregnant operations manager in Rwanda, ready to pop, who’s still a badass,” she said.

“So the term ‘women in mining’ for me just encompasses such a diverse and inspiring range of women.”

One of her key priorities is training and upskilling women in mining, even for women working in offices rather than on mine sites. And she’s found that working remotely four days a week at the Minespider office in Berlin has been useful for that.

“Being remote actually allowed us to give exceptional people and more women opportunities in our company,” she said.

Women have a key role to play in developing technology that will serve everyone, Cullen noted.

“The future of mining and sustainability isn’t about the next big innovation,” she said. “It’s about the people who make that innovation possible, especially women who continue to defy the odds.”

To nominate candidates for the 2025 YMP awards, visit youngminingprofessionals.com. Nominations are due by Nov. 30, 2024.