Directors and Management

The Galileo Resources board consists of Colin Bird (CEO & Chairman), Edward (Ed) Slowey (Executive Director), J Richard Wollenberg (Non-Executive Director) and Christopher Molefe (Non-Executive Director).

Colin Bird

Executive Chairman

Executive Chairman Colin is a chartered mining engineer and a Fellow of the Institute of Materials, Minerals and Mining with more than 40 years’ experience in resource operations management, corporate management, and finance.

Colin has multi commodity mine management experience in Africa, Spain, Latin America and the Middle East. He has been the prime mover in a number of public company listings in the UK, Canada and South Africa.

His most notable achievement was founding Kiwara Resources Plc and selling its prime asset, a copper property in Northern Zambia, to First Quantum Minerals for US$260 million in November 2009.

Edward (Ed) Slowey

Technical Director

B.Sc. Geology, National University of Ireland, PGeo, EurGeol

Ed holds a BSc degree in Geology from the National University of Ireland and is a founder member of The Institute of Geology of Ireland. He has more than 40 years’ experience in mineral exploration, mining and project management.

He worked as a mine geologist at Europe’s largest zinc mine in Navan, Ireland and was exploration manager for Rio Tinto in Ireland for more than a decade, which led to the discovery of the Cavanacaw gold deposit.

He has also operated as an exploration geologist and consultant in many parts of the world, including Africa, Europe, America and the FSU. This work included joint venture negotiation, exploration programme planning and management through to feasibility study implementation for a variety of commodities. As a professional consultant, work has included completion of CPRs and 43-101 technical reports for international stock exchange listings and fundraising, while also undertaking assignments for the World Bank and European Union bodies.

In addition, Ed served as director of several private and public companies, including the role of CEO and Technical Director at AIM-listed Orogen Gold Plc which discovered the Mutsk gold deposit in Armenia.

J Richard Wollenberg

Non-Executive Director

Richard Wollenberg, was, between 1981 and 1996, an investment consultant with Brown Shipley Stockbroking Limited and has over the past 25 years, been actively involved in a number of corporate acquisitions, mergers and capital re-organisations of public and private companies.

Mr.Wollenberg is currently Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of The Cardiff Property Public Limited Company, a quoted property investment and development company.

He was also a Non-Executive Director of Kiwara Plc alongside Colin Bird.

Christopher (Chris) Molefe

Non-Executive Director

B.Com (Unin); Post graduate diploma (University of Cape Town)

Mr. Molefe was formerly the Chief Executive of Royal Bafokeng Resources (Pty) Limited and is presently the Non-Executive Chairman of Merafe Resources Limited, a publicly listed company on the JSE Securities Exchange, and a non-executive Director of Capital Oil (Pty) Ltd and Jubilee Platinum.

Mr. Molefe has held several positions in corporate banking and industry for the previous 20 years.

He commenced his career as Group Human Resource Manger at Union Carbide Africa Corporation. His subsequent positions include being the Manager of Corporate Affairs at Mobil Oil Southern Africa (Pty) Limited; an Executive Director at Black Management Forum; a Financial Analyst at Chase Manhattan Bank; the Marketing Manager at African Bank Limited; an Executive Manager at Transnet (Propnet) (Pty) Limited; and an Executive Director at Dipapatso Media (Pty).

Joel Silberstein

Finance Director

Joel holds an Honours Bachelor of Accounting Science degree from the University of South Africa.

He qualified as a chartered accountant with Mazars, Cape Town in 2002, and subsequently joined Toronto-quoted European Goldfields Limited. There he held the position of Group Financial Controller and Vice President Finance, supporting the executive team in growing the company through its exploration and development phases, until it was bought by Eldorado Gold in a C$2.5bn deal.

He joined AIM-traded Xtract Resources plc in mid 2013 and was appointed finance director in February 2014. He has subsequently assisted in several corporate transactions, including those surrounding the Manica gold mining operations, and he has experience of working in multiple jurisdictions around the world.  He also joined the Galileo Resources Plc board in October 2020 as Financial Director.

He is a member of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of South Africa as well a Fellow of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales.

Sylvia Vrska

Manager Corporate & Investor Relations

Sylvia has had some 12 years experience in Marketing/Sales.

Her experience had been global, working for Education First (EF) based in Berlin with responsibilities in central Europe and North America. Thereafter she worked in Dubai in architectural and property marketing.