John Gilligan

Dr. Jon Gilligan is President, CEO and a director of Liberty Gold (TSX: LGD), the company developing the Black Pine oxide gold project in Idaho — one of the larger new open-pit heap leach gold developments taking shape in the United States. He became CEO in June 2025 after more than 35 years building and running mines across three continents, and now leads Black Pine through feasibility and permitting toward a construction decision.

Gilligan holds a B.Sc. (Hons.) in geology from University College London and a Ph.D. in gold mineralization in Archean rocks from the University of Southampton. His career has been spent in technical services and capital projects: senior roles with BHP, SSR Mining and Torex Gold, and work on projects including the Escondida and Escondida Norte copper mines in Chile, the Olympic Dam Expansion in South Australia, the Chinchillas open pit in Argentina, and the Marigold open-pit heap leach operation in Nevada. He joined Liberty Gold as Chief Operating Officer in 2021, was promoted to President and COO in November 2023, and succeeded the retiring Cal Everett as President and CEO effective June 12, 2025. In January 2026 he also took on the Non-Executive Chair role at Cabral Gold, which is advancing the Cuiu Cuiu gold project in Brazil.

His specialty is moving large, low-grade oxide gold deposits through technical study toward production — the model Black Pine follows, where gold is recovered by heap leaching (stacking crushed ore on lined pads and irrigating it with solution to dissolve the gold) at a scale where costs hold up at weaker gold prices. Under his leadership Liberty Gold has grown Black Pine's indicated resource to 4.88 million ounces of gold, sold the non-core Goldstrike project in Utah to sharpen focus, and published an updated Feasibility Study showing an after-tax NPV (Net Present Value — what a project's future cash flows are worth today) of roughly US$2.4 billion at a US$3,250 per ounce gold price, with first production targeted for 2029.

For investors following junior gold developers, Gilligan's interviews and Liberty Gold's technical disclosures offer a concrete example of how a management team converts drill results into reserves (ore that can be mined profitably) and a study into a financeable project. His recent commentary has centered on Black Pine's permitting path in Idaho, drill-driven resource growth, and funding the project without over-diluting shareholders.