Shane is General Counsel for Pala, with responsibility over all legal, regulatory and transactional matters relating to Pala’s investment activities. Drawing on his prior experience as a corporate/securities lawyer at Torys LLP in Toronto, Canada, Shane assists the investment team with both due diligence and negotiation of potential new investments as well as monitoring and providing legal assistance to Pala’s portfolio companies.

Shane has been a part of the Pala Legal team since 2016. In his prior career as a corporate lawyer, Shane worked on a vast number of international mining and energy projects, and completed secondments with NextEra Energy Canada and Pala (before joining the team full-time).

Shane obtained his Juris Doctor degree (with distinction) and his Bachelor of Arts degree (Honours) from Western University in London, Canada and was admitted to the Ontario Bar from 2012 until 2017.

Martina is a Research Manager and oversees Pala’s High Conviction Ideas Portfolio.  Her investment experience spans commodity markets, equity and debt issuers and thematic investment strategies. Martina’s focus since 2020 has been in global lithium and graphite supply chains, in addition to continuous coverage of the green cement, aluminium, steel and iron ore markets, allowing her to successfully analyze and execute high conviction trades across Pala’s traded portfolios.   

Previously, on Pala’s Private Equity team, Martina analyzed numerous M&A transactions across the natural resources space.  She has supported a number of strategic reviews for Pala’s portfolio companies, including international expansion initiatives for investments in the mining consumables and services space.  Martina helped develop numerous tools to improve productivity and efficiency, which have led to successful turnarounds of distressed assets and operations.

Prior to joining Pala, Martina worked for Schindler Elevators and Panasonic in the Finance and HR departments.

Erica is an advisor to Pala Investments.

Erica joined Pala in 2014 and has worked across Pala’s investment activities, including private equity, structured finance, and liquid investment strategies. She has been closely involved with several of Pala’s key investments, including Sierra Rutile (turnaround of world’s largest high grade titanium producer) and Image Resources (industrial minerals construction loan), and led Pala’s environmental commodities investment strategy.

Erica is passionate about finding innovative ways to join financial returns with sustainability goals, and leveraging her expertise in commodity markets and project finance to structure alignment for all stakeholders.

Prior to Pala, Erica worked with RBC Capital Markets’ global investment banking team in Toronto, Canada.

Erica holds a BSc in Geological Engineering from Queen’s University in Kingston, Canada.

Alexandre is a data scientist at Pala, responsible for developing proprietary technical analysis and intelligence tools to enhance Pala’s commodity and macro views, as well as the development and integration of internal tools.

His models use python and machine learning to automatically analyse data. The generated results are then automatically provided to the team via a customised internal website. The purpose of the results is to generate trade ideas, predict the prices direction, and determine the right time to enter a trade.

Alexandre holds a PhD in Data Science from Fribourg University, and a Master's degree in Physics from EPFL. His previous projects include the development of recommender system for social networks, and the creation of a tool using artificial intelligence for animal tracking.