Giovanni Di Prisco

How did you get your start in the mineral industry?

I got lucky! Back in 1986, I was a young, idealistic, “fresh off the boat” landed immigrant in Toronto who spoke French but not English. Nonetheless, I was hired just three weeks after I arrived in Canada by very smart and insightful geologists/ managers at the Ontario Geological Survey in the Economic Deposit Department (led by Dr. Sandy Colvine). They saw something in that young graduate geologist that I could not recognize in myself for a very long time. My experiences at the Survey propelled me to an unbroken successful carrier in the mineral industry.

What has been the most memorable experience of your career?

I cannot limit myself to only one so here are a few: Sleeping in our gear in minus 45 degree Celsius outside in the middle of the Gobi Desert in Mongolia at the Oyu Tolgoi camp. The air was so clean and crisp that the night sky was peppered by billions of stars. Or getting up at night to watch the unbelievable dance of northern lights at the Goose Lake camp in the great Canadian north. Yet the experience that touched me the most was a brief encounter with two kids, brother and sister, aged 12 and 9, who we met as my colleagues and I were driving up to the Antamina deposit in the Peruvian Andes. These kids were walking back home from school and most days they walked 34 kilometers, in the mountains, so they could have a chance at a better life. After that encounter, every time I thought I had it bad I would think back to these kids and my situation never seemed that bad after all.