Al Pritchard didn’t apply for the Paul Stothart Memorial Scholarship as a student weighing what to do next. He was ten years into a career in airborne geophysics and partway through an MBA when the scholarship came onto his radar, its focus on the mining industry lining up closely with the work he was already doing.
That work began in 2006, with a degree in mathematics and engineering from Queen’s University. After a brief stint in structural engineering, Pritchard moved into airborne geophysics, joining Sander Geophysics a year later. At the time, the company’s business was still weighted more toward oil and gas than mining.
By the time he applied for the scholarship in 2016, Pritchard had worked his way into a field operations leadership role at Sander Geophysics and had started an MBA at the University of Ottawa’s Telfer School of Management. For the application, he wrote about how government, industry and Indigenous communities would need to work together to find success in the Ring of Fire, a topic that pushed him to think about the industry at a strategic level rather than the technical one he knew best.
“It’s interesting because the scholarship was kind of my first step into opening that macro strategic view,” Pritchard said, “and I think it’s given me a lot of value in my career.”
That shift in thinking carried into what came next. Pritchard moved to Export Development Canada, joining a team focused on helping Canadian companies win international business in mining. Over nine years there, his work grew from connecting individual exporters with international mining companies to leading the development of EDC’s critical minerals strategy, exposing him to parts of the industry, financing, construction, operations, rehabilitation, that his geophysics background alone hadn’t covered.
It’s a path that’s taken him around the world, something Pritchard sees as one of the industry’s underrated draws for people early in their careers. “If you want your career to be global or international, there’s not many industries better than mining that could facilitate that,” he said.
That broader view eventually brought him back to Sander Geophysics, where he now serves as Vice President.
Looking back, Pritchard sees the scholarship as a turning point less for the recognition than for the shift in thinking it prompted. Writing about the industry strategically, rather than just working in it, became a habit that shaped the rest of his career.
He also points to the scholarship as an entry point into the broader mining community he describes as small and closely connected. Through it, and through the years since, he has built an extensive global network, developed relationships across the industry and has repeatedly engaged with the Mining Association of Canada in a professional capacity. “You don’t realize where the mining industry is going to take you,” Pritchard said, “but for me, the Canadian mining industry has provided an exciting and fulfilling career.”
