Professional Background: A highly acclaimed geologist, Fipke is a leading figure in the discovery of diamonds and precious stones in North America ... Chairman of both Metalex, a diamond exploration company, and Cantex http://www.cantex.ca/ , a company searching for gold in Nevada and Yemen ... His work is documented in the book “Fire into Ice: Charles Fipke and the Great Diamond Hunt.” ... Fipke and Dr. Stewart Blusson are credited with initiating the largest mineral staking rush in North America since the Klondike Gold Rush of the 1890s. In 1991, Fipke discovered a diamond mine northeast of Yellowknife in the Northwest Territories of Canada. Subsequently, roughly 260 companies registered claims for 100,000 square miles of land in the area ... Fipke’s find led to the establishment of the Ekati Mine in 1998, located near Lac de Gras, which is considered to be one of the world’s largest diamond mines. Fipke owns a 10 percent share of the mine, which accounts for 4 percent of the world’s diamond production ... In 2006, he donated $6 million through his foundation to establish the Charles Fipke Centre for Innovative Research at UBC Okanagan and $1 million to purchase the Charles Fipke LAM-ICPMS – a state-of-the-art mass spectrometer that uses lasers to analyze sample materials . . . Fipke has been a longtime supporter of WildAid, an organization dedicated to protecting endangered species ... Fipke met actress Bo Derek through his work with WildAid, and she was one of Fipke’s guests at Churchill Downs when Tale of Ekati ran in the 2008 Kentucky Derby