Robert Friedland was appointed co-chair of Clean TeQ on 8 September 2016.
For over 25 years, Mr Friedland has founded and led two prominent international mining entities under the Ivanhoe Mines banner. He is executive co-chair and a director of Ivanhoe Mines which has three major mine development projects and exploration underway in Southern Africa including construction of three new mines, two of which are on world-scale mineral discoveries made by Ivanhoe Mines, in South Africa and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Mr Friedland was executive chair and chief executive of the original Ivanhoe Mines until 2012, and president from 2003 to 2008. He directed Ivanhoe Mines' assembly of a portfolio of interests in several countries over 16 years and led the company's team that made the discoveries and initial development of the Oyu Tolgoi copper-gold-silver deposits in southern Mongolia.
Before founding Ivanhoe Mines, Mr Friedland was a co-founding principal investor in Diamond Fields Resources in late 1992. Becoming co-chair in 1994 after company-funded exploration discovered high-grade nickel at Voisey's Bay in Canada, Mr Friedland led negotiations for the subsequent sale of the tier-one discovery to INCO for C$4.3 billion in 1996.
Mr Friedland is also chair and president of Ivanhoe Capital Corporation, his family's private Singapore-based company founded in 1987 that specialises in providing venture capital, project financing and related services for international business enterprises, predominantly in the minerals, energy and communications technologies sectors.
He was inducted into the Canadian Mining Hall of Fame in 2016.