Who we are
Meet our board
Sophie Chung
Chief Executive Officer
Sophie Chung is CEO of Skarn Associates, where she leads the company’s strategy and growth at the intersection of metals, carbon, energy and capital.
With a career spanning mining operations, commodity markets, financial analysis and sustainability intelligence, Sophie brings a distinctive commercial perspective to the challenges facing global metals production.
She is focused on transforming complex asset-level intelligence into actionable insights that help the industry navigate operating risk, capital allocation and the transition towards more responsible metal production.
Since joining Skarn in 2020, Sophie has played a central role in building its analytical products and capabilities. She now leads the company’s next phase of growth, including the development of comparable intelligence and benchmarks designed to inform commercial decisions across global metals supply chains.
Prior to Skarn, Sophie held positions at Rio Tinto, Wood Mackenzie and Desjardins Capital Markets. She holds an Honours BSc in Geology and Physics from the University of Toronto.
Mark Fellows
Co-founder & Executive Director
Mark has over 30 years experience, providing strategic advice on metal markets, exploration, development projects, operating mines and corporate development. Mark’s expertise includes asset evaluation, benchmarking and optimisation, and encompasses, geology, mining, ore processing, and mining finance. He has conducted investment appraisals of numerous companies, mining projects and mining sector services businesses.
Prior to co-founding Skarn, Mark led the metals & mining consulting business at SNL Financial.
His career started in 1987 as an exploration geologist with Anglo American Corporation in Southern Africa. He went on to work for junior diamond and gold explorers in West and East Africa. He subsequently spent 13 years at Brook Hunt & Associates Ltd (now Wood Mackenzie) where he held the position of Director with primary responsibility for bespoke consulting work. From 2009 Mark was Managing Director of GFMS Mine Economics Limited, a business co-founded with GFMS Limited, which was sold to Thomson Reuters in 2011.
Mark graduated from University of Liverpool with a B.Sc. (Hons) in Geology.
Simon Benney
Board Chair
Simon has an extensive track record in technology in the Mining & Metals sector, including senior executive roles in RioTinto and ArcelorMittal where, as CIO, he led global Digital, Data, IT and Transformation functions.
Prior to that, Simon served as global CIO of Airbus/EADS, and as an Associate Principal at McKinsey & Co. Simon is currently Managing Partner of Kernow Advisory sarl, Managing Director of Bloomsbury Information Capital Ltd and an NED at Bloomsbury Minerals Economics, Minviro and Mutinex. He also serves as a senior advisor to McKinsey & Co and the European Investment Bank.
Robert Garlick
Chief Financial Officer
Rob is a commercially focused CFO who is passionate about growing B2B businesses in Technology and Innovation sectors. Rob has a broad experience working with Technology, Financial Services, Manufacturing and Professional Services businesses supporting their growth and fundraising requirements.
Rob has a degree in Mechanical Engineering from Exeter University and then qualified as an accountant with PwC. Post qualification Rob went on to work with the Blue-Chip organisations of the BMW Group and Logica/CGI and then moved into the start-up world supporting Founders and CEOs.
Leadership
Meet our leadership
Sophie Chung
Chief Executive Officer
Sophie Chung is CEO of Skarn Associates, where she leads the company’s strategy and growth at the intersection of metals, carbon, energy and capital.
With a career spanning mining operations, commodity markets, financial analysis and sustainability intelligence, Sophie brings a distinctive commercial perspective to the challenges facing global metals production.
She is focused on transforming complex asset-level intelligence into actionable insights that help the industry navigate operating risk, capital allocation and the transition towards more responsible metal production.
Since joining Skarn in 2020, Sophie has played a central role in building its analytical products and capabilities. She now leads the company’s next phase of growth, including the development of comparable intelligence and benchmarks designed to inform commercial decisions across global metals supply chains.
Prior to Skarn, Sophie held positions at Rio Tinto, Wood Mackenzie and Desjardins Capital Markets. She holds an Honours BSc in Geology and Physics from the University of Toronto.
Mark Fellows
Co-founder & Executive Director
Mark has over 30 years experience, providing strategic advice on metal markets, exploration, development projects, operating mines and corporate development. Mark’s expertise includes asset evaluation, benchmarking and optimisation, and encompasses, geology, mining, ore processing, and mining finance. He has conducted investment appraisals of numerous companies, mining projects and mining sector services businesses.
Prior to co-founding Skarn, Mark led the metals & mining consulting business at SNL Financial.
His career started in 1987 as an exploration geologist with Anglo American Corporation in Southern Africa. He went on to work for junior diamond and gold explorers in West and East Africa. He subsequently spent 13 years at Brook Hunt & Associates Ltd (now Wood Mackenzie) where he held the position of Director with primary responsibility for bespoke consulting work. From 2009 Mark was Managing Director of GFMS Mine Economics Limited, a business co-founded with GFMS Limited, which was sold to Thomson Reuters in 2011.
Mark graduated from University of Liverpool with a B.Sc. (Hons) in Geology.
Robert Garlick
Chief Financial Officer
Rob is a commercially focused CFO who is passionate about growing B2B businesses in Technology and Innovation sectors. Rob has a broad experience working with Technology, Financial Services, Manufacturing and Professional Services businesses supporting their growth and fundraising requirements.
Rob has a degree in Mechanical Engineering from Exeter University and then qualified as an accountant with PwC. Post qualification Rob went on to work with the Blue-Chip organisations of the BMW Group and Logica/CGI and then moved into the start-up world supporting Founders and CEOs.
Tobias Hardy
Chief Revenue Officer
Tobias brings over 20 years of commercial leadership experience in high-growth B2B SaaS businesses, with a track record of building and scaling go-to-market teams across Europe and North America. Prior to joining Skarn, he worked with multiple start-ups, leading pre- and post-sale teams through every stage of growth — from early product–market fit to global scale and multi-million dollar revenues.
At Skarn, Tobias leads all commercial functions, including sales, marketing and customer success. His focus is on accelerating adoption of Skarn’s intelligence solutions and delivering sustainable, long-term value for customers across both the mining and financial sectors.
Lucent Nicholson
Head of Data
Lucent Nicholson has over 17 years of analyst and processing engineering experience in the mining and metals industry covering multiple sectors including the base metals, aluminium and PGMs
Before joining Skarn Associates, Lucent spent 13 years at CRU working in a number of analyst roles, most recently as Head of Base Metals Costs. He was instrumental in the design of costs and carbon emission models and the supply platform in the base metals team.
Lucent began his career at Alcoa’s Clarendon Alumina Works in Jamaica, where he was the process engineer responsible for their Thickener and Filtration circuits.
Michael Giblin
Head of Research
Michael has nearly 20 years of experience in the metals sector covering exploration and mining operations as a geologist and geotechnical engineer, and as an industry analyst covering base and precious metal supply forecasting, cost analysis and research, including uranium and battery materials.
Prior to joining Skarn Associates, Michael spent almost 10 years working in the metal exploration and mining industry in Ireland and Australia with a particular focus on gold, nickel, zinc and lead operations and projects. Michael then joined the Metals and Mining Research team of S&P Global Market Intelligence as an analyst progressing to Senior Analyst leading the mine economics team, where he covered mine-level supply forecasts and production costs for a range of metals.
Michael graduated from Trinity College, University of Dublin, with a B.A. Mod. Geology.
Chang Khoo
Head of Product Solutions
Chang brings more than 15 years’ experience across metals and mining, including Mitsubishi Development and Wood Mackenzie, spanning market intelligence, consulting and commercial strategy.
Chang’s role at Skarn is to turn our understanding of market and client needs into products that are useful, commercially relevant and built to support real-world decisions.
Team
Meet our team
Dr John Anderson
Principal Consultant - Metallurgical Analysis
John has over 30 years of experience in the smelting industries and joins us to provide support in the development of our ESG smelting capability. This will allow Skarn to look at smelting assets from technical, economic and environmental bases.
John worked for the last 13 years at Wood Mackenzie where he was responsible for their smelter analysis in terms of costs, revenues and emissions. Before this he was at Minton, Treharne & Davies where he worked as a metallurgical consultant dealing with projects ranging from fire and water damage to theft of cargoes across the metals and coal/coke space. He had worked at the Britannia Zinc smelter in the UK for 10 years serving in a number of technical and commercial positions. Upon leaving Birmingham University, where he had gained a PhD in Chemical Engineering, John worked for British Steel investigating process developments to produce steel without coke.
Elen Ivarsson
Commercial Operations Lead
Skarn Associates is dedicated to providing data on sustainability and environmental impacts in the mining industry. My role in Operations is to oversee and streamline the operational aspects of the company to support our vision of decarbonising the mining sector and reducing its carbon footprint by ensuring the smooth functioning of various operational processes within Skarn Associates. This includes optimising internal workflows, managing resources efficiently, identifying operational requirements and opportunities across the company, establishing and maintaining quality standards, ensuring compliance with regulatory standards and ensuring that our projects align with the company’s sustainability goals.
I am Editor of Skarn Bulletin and I also provide support to the Board of Directors. I work closely with a talented and diverse group of analysts, consultants, and engineers who share the same commitment to sustainability and innovation in the mining industry. Together, we strive to create a sustainable and environmentally responsible future for the mining sector.
Derek Llewellyn
Commercial Consultant
Derek has over 30 years’ experience in international and state school leadership and has had advisory and consultant roles in the operations of international schools, using new technologies and solutions in local government and global companies.
Derek holds an M.Sc. in Learning Technologies and Computing from Birkbeck College, University of London.
Matthew West
Downstream Analyst
Matthew is a PhD-qualified chemical engineer who moved into base metal downstream analysis after years performing emissions analysis and developing carbon capture technology for carbon intense industries such as steel and cement. His background spans process and data analysis, process design and emissions assessment, giving him a strong technical grounding for tackling complex industrial challenges.
Tom Verrept
Senior Analyst
Tom has a B.S.C. in Mining engineering from Camborne School of Mines. He has worked as a graduate engineer at BHP NiWest Leinster as well as Development Engineer A&I (analysis and improvement) at Olympic Dam Mine.
Tom is currently building detailed technically-driven energy and emissions models for a range of mines and companies.
Florence Adu
Research Analyst
Florence has joined Skarn’s GHG & Energy non-ferrous research team, currently undertaking the research, collation and modelling of mining industry production, greenhouse gas and energy data.Florence has 19 years of experience in geology, mineral exploration, mining operations, and consultancy. Her work with AMC Consultants (UK) Ltd involved mineral resource evaluation across a global portfolio. She also worked on Newmont’s Ahafo mine, leading and managing cross-cultural teams on exploration and advanced-staged projects.
Before joining Skarn Associates, Florence worked with Wood Mackenzie in the Metals and Mining research team. Using her previous gold sector experience, she supported the premium Gold Mine Cost Service, where she applied analytical tools to validate and critically assess sources of information to generate meaningful analysis.
Florence holds an MSc in Mining Geology from Camborne School of Mines (University of Exeter) and an MBA from Strathclyde University, Glasgow.
Dr James Braithwaite
Research Analyst
James holds an MSci in Physics and a PhD in Mineral Physics from University College London (UCL).
His PhD thesis focused on computational modelling of Earth mantle materials at high pressures and temperatures. The aim of his research was to calculate physical properties of the mantle, and ultimately begin to answer fundamental questions about the evolution of the Earth over billions of years.
James is now applying his vast research and analysis expertise to modelling energy and carbon emissions from mines all over the world.
Akinori Suganuma
Research Analyst
Akinori is currently focusing on modelling energy and GHG emissions for the mining idustry across a range of base and precious metal commodities, to support Skarn’s industry leading GHG and Energy Curve products.
Akinori joined Skarn in 2022 from the University of Edinburgh with a MEarthSci (Hons) in Geology. He has experience in the fieldwork, lab work and modelling and produced his Master’s thesis concerning the origin of felsic veins in the quartz-dolerite sill in Fife, Scotland.
Bella Clarke
Research Analyst
Bella has a BSc in Physical Geography and an MRes in Environmental Geoscience from Newcastle University. They have experience in GIS, and remote sensing following their master’s thesis on subglacial lakes and their links to climate change in Antarctica. They are focusing on modelling energy and Scope 1, 2, and 3 emissions to support Skarn’s GHG and Energy Curve Products.
Frank Pérez
Senior Software Engineer
Frank brings more than 20 years of software engineering experience, with particular strength in building scalable web platforms and APIs, modernising legacy systems, and delivering reliable production systems.
He has worked across a wide range of technologies including PHP, Go, React and AWS, combining hands-on development with architecture and end-to-end product delivery.
Prior to joining Skarn, Frank worked at companies including Bumble, where he helped modernise high-traffic systems supporting millions of users, as well as leading engineering and platform development across a number of earlier businesses.
A Skarn initiative
Launching at LME WeekMeridianPCF by Skarn
MeridianPCF applies Skarn’s asset-level intelligence to product carbon footprints, starting with copper.
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