Mr. Patankar is a senior mining executive with more than 15 years of public company management, investment banking and capital markets experience. He brings a diverse financial, technical, and strategic skill set, including mergers and acquisitions, capital raising, project evaluation and development, financial controls and reporting, stakeholder engagement and corporate governance. He previously served as Maple Gold’s Chief Financial Officer since 2022, after serving as the Company’s Senior Vice President, Growth Strategy since 2021. From 2015 to 2018, Mr. Patankar served as President, CEO and a Director of two TSX-V listed gold exploration and development companies, where he led growth initiatives and orchestrated successful company turnarounds. As an investment banker with leading Canadian and global financial institutions from 2007 to 2014, he worked exclusively with mining companies on strategic corporate matters and executed M&A and corporate finance transactions totaling more than $3 billion in value. Mr. Patankar holds a Bachelor of Science in Geological Engineering from the Colorado School of Mines and an MBA from the Yale School of Management.