Categories: Precious Metals
Topics: General Precious Metals

RSD at Beaver Creek Interview: SIREM's Liz Monger & Chris Donaldson

Gerardo Del Real: This is Gerardo Del Real with Resource Stock Digest here at the Beaver Creek Precious Metals Summit. I'm here with Mr. Chris Donaldson and Ms. Liz Monger of SIREM.

Gerardo Del Real: How are you two?

Liz Monger: Good.

Chris Donaldson: Yeah, we're doing great.

Gerardo Del Real: So, listen. Mr. Nick Hodge, Outsider Club founder, and myself, which co-own Resource Stock Digest, have a little bit of a habit of calling out some of the shadier parts of our industry. Right? And we try to highlight and poke fun at some of the nasty stuff that goes on and there's plenty to go around.

It's been my absolute pleasure recently to cover something that I know the both of you are passionate about and are involved in. I want to start from the beginning because it's a really fascinating story. Let's talk a little bit, Chris, about this incredible event that's happening, but take me back to the origin story.

Chris Donaldson: Well, it started actually, kind of, as a joke. A bunch of us investor relations people got together as we do at many of these conferences.

Gerardo Del Real: The the better amongst you.

Chris Donaldson: The better amongst us, yeah. We're kind of a family because we're on the road quite a bit together. We wanted to find a way that we could promote the industry in a better way, so we've been doing some group marketing and had some group dinners and so forth.

We had this idea that between the two big conferences – the Precious Metals one and the next one that's coming up at Denver Gold there's a two-day gap – we want to be able to bridge the two conferences and have an event that also might have a bit of a charity angle to it.

We went to this place called Howl at the Moon, which is a dueling piano bar, and we had a blast there and got this cockamamie idea that we could have an event and we would promote it by doing a little bit of a video and a song.

We were at a karaoke bar and we started singing We Are The World. This was our SIREM, which is the society name. It was our Christmas party and the light bulb went off.

Liz Monger: We all like to think for singers.

Gerardo Del Real: I saw the video and it was absolutely fantastic.

Liz Monger: We're not singers.

Chris Donaldson: I think you're generous with that.

Gerardo Del Real: You did a phenomenal job in two aspects. You brought incredible attention to the space, positive attention, and you also raised a whole bunch of money for a very good cause and for some kids that absolutely need it and deserve it. Talk to me about the acronym.

Chris Donaldson: SIREM is the Society of Investor Relations Executives in Mining.

Gerardo Del Real: Only investor relations folk could come up with this stuff and do it so effectively.

Liz Monger: And the organization we're raising money for is the Make-A-Wish Foundation, which grants wishes to children living with critical medical conditions to bring them some hope, strength and joy when they're going through a really tough time.

Gerardo Del Real: Excellent.

Liz Monger: We set the goal of raising $100,000, which is 10 wishes. It's about $10,000 a wish. And actually, already before our event, even on Sunday, we are getting very, very close to this goal.

Gerardo Del Real: It's absolutely incredible.

Liz Monger: And we want to thank you for being a supporter of the event as well.

Gerardo Del Real: Absolutely.

Chris Donaldson: And there's only one other person I'd like to call out on that. An executive in mining, Bryan Slusarchuk, started us off. On our first day he called in, knew we were getting together and gave us a $10,000 wish and challenged other guys. He really was the catalyst to get things going and since then a number of guys have stepped up and we've been tweeting out their check presentations and so on.

The event itself is coming up on the 15th and hopefully we'll get even more wishes for both the Colorado Make-A-Wish and the one in Canada, BC.

Gerardo Del Real: Can you share the website for people that want to look up the video, see the event because they'll watch this after the event happens, and we'll make sure that we put a link for it?

Liz Monger: Yeah, it's www.sirem.ca.

Gerardo Del Real: Excellent. Lastly, I want to give you an opportunity to promote your companies. Can you tell people a little bit about what you do on the business professional side.

Chris Donaldson: Sure. Well, technically I'm Director of Corporate Development for Western Copper and Gold (TSX: WRN)(NYSE: WRN). We've got the large Casino Project that we're currently in the middle of permitting up in the Yukon. So we're a couple of years away getting it permitted, but it's big puppy. 18 million ounces of gold and 10 billion pounds of copper.

Liz Monger: I do investor relations for Midas Gold (TSX: MAX)(OTC: MDRPF). And I think you just had an interview with Stephen Quinn, so I'm sure he talked about our project in Central Idaho, a development-stage project.

Gerardo Del Real: Excellent. Folks, Chris Donaldson, Liz Monger, Beaver Creek Precious Metal Summit.