Joel Sutherland

Joel Sutherland is the Chief Executive Officer of Hayasa Metals (TSX-V: HAY), a Vancouver-based exploration company working copper and gold in Armenia — one of the least-explored parts of the Tethyan Belt, the metal-rich geological zone that runs from Europe through the Middle East to Asia. His relevance to resource investors comes from what he has done with that position: he repositioned a small Canadian-listed explorer into Armenia, renamed it Hayasa Metals, and within a year attracted a Teck Resources earn-in — a staged deal in which a major funds exploration to earn a stake in a project — at the company's flagship Vardenis copper-gold project, a notable endorsement for a junior of its size.

Sutherland is a capital markets veteran rather than a geologist: a CPA, CA and CFA charterholder with more than 20 years as an equity research analyst and in institutional sales at Merrill Lynch in Toronto and New York, BMO Capital Markets, and CIBC World Markets. He was Vice President of Corporate Development and Investor Relations at ProStar Holdings before joining Fremont Gold as an advisor in January 2024. Appointed CEO that August, he refocused the company on Armenia and renamed it Hayasa Metals. In August 2025 he announced an option agreement giving Teck an initial 70% of Vardenis by funding US$15 million of exploration by the end of 2029, with a path to 80%; Teck also invested in a roughly $2 million private placement, taking a 9.9% stake.

His approach is deal-driven project generation: secure district-scale ground early in an underexplored jurisdiction, then bring in a major whose funding and geological depth do the heavy lifting while shareholders retain exposure. Under that model, Hayasa ran a Teck-funded 10-hole, 4,561-meter drill program at Vardenis in 2025, drilled its Urasar copper-gold project — which delivered a 39-meter intercept grading 0.50% copper in 2026 — and in September 2026 signed a term sheet for a Strategic Exploration Alliance under which a major mining company would solely fund two years of copper and critical-metals exploration in southern Armenia.

The record also holds a candid lesson in how these partnerships end: Teck elected to terminate its Vardenis option in September 2026 after the program returned no significant economic mineralization, and Sutherland said so plainly — the project "was not able to satisfy the criteria for advancement at this time." Vardenis has reverted to Hayasa, which reports inbound interest in the ground, and a definitive alliance agreement is expected before the end of 2026. For investors, following Sutherland offers a working education in how juniors win, manage, and lose major-miner partnerships in frontier jurisdictions.