Jerry Blackwell is a graduate of the University of Western Ontario in London, Ontario with an Honours Degree B.Sc. in Geology (1974), and is a Professional geoscientist registered in the Province of British Columbia.

Upon graduation, he was employed by Cominco Limited in their Toronto office as an exploration geologist, and was involved in formulating and carrying out grass-roots uranium exploration throughout North America, with the primary focus being the reconnaissance in the (then) Northwest Territories. In 1980, he took a leave of absence to work on a graduate degree (spending the summer months again working for Cominco on sedex zinc in the Selwyn Basin of the Yukon and at the Sullivan Mine in southeastern British Columbia). In 1983, he relocated to Vancouver and worked for Cominco’s Western Exploration Department on a variety of base metal and precious metal programmes in northwestern British Columbia , including the Snip and Tulsequah Chief properties, and in Tasmania.

In 1988, he set up a private consulting practice and was involved in a number of projects in Australia and Canada working for both junior exploration companies and multinational miners. During this period, he was lucky enough to become involved in the gold discoveries at Eskay Creek as a consultant to Prime Exploration Inc., the company that managed the exploration and development of the deposit on behalf of Stikine and Calpine. In 1993, he was asked to become the President of Gitennes Exploration Inc. and has served in that position since. In 1996 he took the company to Peru, a result of which was the acquisition of the Virgen property and eventual discovery of an important sandstone-hosted gold deposit that has been placed into production at a rate of 60,000 ounces a year. He continues to pursue grass-roots exploration projects in both Canada and Peru, is a director or advisor to several other junior explorers, and still prefers being in the field to being in the boardroom.