Board of Directors
The Rainbow Rare Earths Board provides leadership to the Group and is responsible for its long term success. The Board currently comprises the Chairman, three executive directors and eight independent non-executive directors.
George Bennett Chief Executive Officer
With over 25 years’ experience in mining, finance and management, George has led a number of mining and energy companies, including Shanta Gold Ltd (which he successfully listed on the London Stock Exchange in 2005) and OreCorp Ltd (which he helped seed, raised the initial capital as a non-executive director and listed on the ASX).
In 2006, George established MDM Engineering Ltd, a mining engineering company building mineral process plants and mining infrastructure throughout Africa , which he listed on the London Stock Exchange in 2008. In 2014, George was instrumental in selling the business to Foster Wheeler Limited for US$120 million.
In addition, George has been a partner and director with a number of leading financial, broking and advisory businesses including Fergusson Bros, Simpson Mckie, and HSBC Securities Africa (Pty) Ltd.
Adonis Pouroulis Non-Executive Chairman
Adonis is an entrepreneur whose expertise lies in the discovery, exploration and development of natural resources across Africa, as well as more recently becoming an active investor and developer of clean technologies and sustainable energy projects. Having worked in the African natural resources sector for over 30 years, he has extensive experience and a wide network of industry relationships across the continent. Adonis is the founder of Rainbow, which he listed in 2017. He is also founder and CEO of Chariot Transitional Energy (AIM: CHAR), founder and Chairman of the Pella Resources Group, and was the founder and Chairman of Petra Diamonds (LSE: PDL). Adonis holds a Bachelor of Science Degree (Honours).
Shawn McCormick Non-Executive Director
Shawn is an International Affairs specialist with more than 20 years’ political and extractive industries sector experience having served in The White House as Director for African Affairs on the National Security Council (Washington), Political Affairs Director of BP (London) and Vice President of TNK-BP (Moscow). He is currently Managing Director of a strategic advisory services company and an adviser to the Pella Resources Group.
Alexander Lowrie Non-Executive Director
Alex is an experienced director, advisor and investor with around 25 years experience, initially in financial markets and subsequently with a specific focus on the critical metals mining and technology sectors. Concentrating on battery, hydrogen and EV critical materials, Alex advises companies from seed stage through to wider capital markets exposure and is a non-executive director to a number of these listed entities. He is also the co-founder of Telemark Capital LLP, a capital advisory and asset management partnership. Prior to this Alex worked for 14 years in investment banking. He was a director at Deutsche Bank and then RBS, having started his banking career originally with ABN AMRO. Through these positions, he gained extensive experience in primary and secondary equity offerings, bringing companies to market through IPOs (including structuring, marketing and distribution).
Atul Bali Non-Executive Director
Atul is a corporate CEO and board member with extensive experience in tech, government contracting and regulated industries operating on all six continents. Over more than 20 years, he has led in excess of 50 M&A and JV transactions in over 25 countries and both managed and served on the boards of several highly regulated businesses. Currently he advises a number of high-growth technology companies, is chairman of the Football Pools and a non-executive director of Everi Holdings Inc (NYSE:EVRI). He has previously held divisional CEO or president positions with IGT (NYSE), Aristocrat (ASX), and Real Networks (NASDAQ), as well as a venture capital firm. He trained as a Chartered Accountant with KPMG in the UK.
J. Peter Pham Non-Executive Director
J. Peter Pham is a scholar and practitioner of International Affairs with more than 20 years of experience in Africa. Most recently, he served until January 2021 as first-ever United States Special Envoy for the Sahel Region with the personal rank of Ambassador. He had previously served as the US Special Envoy for the Great Lakes Region of Africa from 2018-2020.
Ambassador Pham is currently a Distinguished Fellow at the Atlantic Council, a preeminent American foreign policy think tank, where he was Vice President for Research and Regional Initiatives and Director of the Council’s Africa Center before his service in government. He is the author of several books and more than 300 articles, essays and reviews on African politics, security, and economic issues.
He is also a member of the Board of the Smithsonian National Museum of African Art in Washington, DC, serving between 2016-2021 as Vice Chair, as well as a Non-Executive Director of Africell Global Holdings.
Darryll Castle Non-Executive Director
Darryll is currently Director of Operations for TechMet, a strategic shareholder with the right to nominate one Director to the Rainbow Board for so long as it holds at least 10% of the issued shares in the Company. With a background in engineering, Darryll has over 30 years’ experience across company leadership, project/operational delivery and transformation, technical planning and implementation, fund management, business development and governance roles.