Leigh Curyer

PRESIDENT AND CEO NEXGEN ENERGY LTD.

There are few places farther from Australia than La Loche, Saskatchewan. Yet that's where Leigh Curyer, an accountant by training and a native of Adelaide, found himself in late 2011 when his newly formed company, Nexgen Energy, set to work developing its Arrow uranium project. It was hardly a propitious time for uranium. In the wake of the reactor meltdown at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Plant in Japan, the industry entered a deep freeze. Curyer, formerly an analyst on the uranium desk at London-based private equity firm First Reserve International, found himself scouting for new opportunities. “I was confident the market was alive and well,” he says, “and I wanted to go out there and ask that question of myself–could I do it?” Commuting 11 times a year across the Pacific, he helped turn the twotent camp near La Loche into a NAS

DAQ Stock Market- listed, 120-person uranium mining operation.