Team Editorial Board Partners & Sponsors
Highgrade Team
The brain and muscle behind Highgrade. We connect people in the extractive industries, to capture their ideas and expertise, and to translate their insights into shared knowledge.
Nicolas Di Boscio
Editor in Chief
Managing Partner at Ergo Strategy Group, a global advisory firm on natural resources. Following a career as a senior executive in the extractives, he founded RAW Talks in 2016, and led the transformation into Highgrade Media in 2019, bringing together a passion for natural resources, wealth creation, debate and the dissemination of knowledge. He holds a PhD from LSE. He has been regularly published on issues of resource economics and is a visiting lecturer.
Åsa Borssén
Series Host
Åsa is Program Coordinator and host at Highgrade. She is the ballerina that turned to law and resource governance, leading to a J.D. in International Law and a Master’s in International Affairs, and a commitment to sustainability in the extractive sector. In recent years she has collaborated with governments, private sector and international organisations to improve the understanding of resource-led policy and economic development.
Mark Slade
Deputy Editor and Finance Director
Partner at Ergo Strategy Group. Determined to contribute to resource-led development, Mark Slade has spent 15 years advising and advocating to maximise the positive impact of mining, oil and gas projects. With an MSc in Economics, he has combined his professional curiosity with personal wanderlust to advise Prime Ministers on privatisation in PNG, author growth diagnostic studies in the Republic of Palau, and design growth corridors in Guinea.
Marcelo Alzamora
Research Analyst
Marcelo is a Project & Public Policy Analyst with Ergo Strategy Group. He previously consulted to Peru’s Ministry of Economics and Finance. Based in Lima, he has worked on many public sector projects, including analysing social conflict in the mining sector, public healthcare investments, and overall governance issues at the subnational level in Peru. He holds a Master in Public Policy from Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs.
Editorial Board
The members of the Editorial Board are all leading policy makers and practitioners in the fields of resource economics, international policy and development. They meet regularly to provide editorial guidance for the interview series.
Dr Elizabeth Bastida
CEPMLP, University of Dundee
“The literature for avoiding the resource curse is reasonably clear – the main difficulty has been putting policy into practice. Highgrade helps to translate academic research into shared knowledge.”
Yannic Kiewitt
Senior Policy Officer for Raw Materials, BMZ
“The extractive sector can play a key role in implementing the SD Agenda – from facilitating the green energy transition to establishing responsible supply chains. Highgrade makes these topics accessible to the broader development community.”
Dr Nicolas Di Boscio
Editor-in-Chief, Highgrade
“Highgrade is insightful and modern, combining analytical rigor with a straightforward communications style. It blends all the necessary ingredients to help push the debate on the extractives and development to the next level.”
Dr Sven Renner
EGPS Program Manager, World Bank
“While we have made progress in understanding the inherent virtues and challenges of the extractive industries, we should now shift focus to the dissemination and practical implementation of that knowledge.”
Partners & Sponsors
We share core values and goals with our partners, and they enable those goals through their financial support. Thank you for joining us on this journey.
German Development Ministry through the Federal geoscience authority BGR and its programme ‘Extractives and Development’. The programme supports sustainable extractive industries in partnering nations.
The main source of financing for economic, social and institutional development in Latin America and the Caribbean, providing loans and grants, guarantees, policy advice and technical assistance to member countries in the region.
Hosted by the University of Dundee, the CEPMLP centre is an internationally renowned graduate school in the field of energy and natural resources law and policy.