Our team
Monetary Metals is a disruptive innovation company dedicated to serving the needs of gold investors and the gold industry by using gold as a capital asset. Our team is comprised of best-in-class professionals from banking, technology, and precious metals. Meet the incredible people who make what we do possible.
Meet the exceptional people who make up the leadership team
Keith Weiner
PhD, CEO & Founder, Chairman of the Board
Keith Weiner is an economist who is a leading authority in the areas of gold, money, and credit and has made important contributions to monetary theory. He is also an entrepreneur who specializes in businesses that solve hard problems. Before Monetary Metals, he founded DiamondWare, a software company that developed 3D voice technology, sold to Nortel in 2008. He is the President of the Gold Standard Institute USA. He earned his PhD from the New Austrian School of Economics.
Jeff Deist
General Counsel
Jeff spent ten years as president of the Mises Institute, where he wrote hundreds of articles and delivered countless speeches on topics of monetary policy, gold, and central banking. Prior to that he worked on Capitol Hill as Chief of Staff for Congressman Ron Paul. He previously worked as an attorney in law firms and public accounting firms specializing in private equity, mergers & acquisitions, and tax. Jeff holds degrees in law and taxation.
John Flaherty
Chief of Staff
Throughout his career, John has excelled in operational leadership roles in the fields of commercial construction management, real estate development and education. In his recent role as Director of Real Estate Development for BASIS Independent Schools, John was responsible for developing a national portfolio of elite private schools. He has a bachelor’s degree in civil engineering from Arizona State University and pursued graduate studies in economics at the University of Arizona.
Nathan Lucas
Chief Financial Officer
Nathan Lucas has over 25 years as an accounting professional. After graduating with a Bachelor of Commerce (Major Accounting & Economics) from Monash University, he was admitted to the Institute of Chartered Accountant in Australia whilst working in the audit division of Ernst & Young. Nathan has worked in a variety of senior finance roles including guiding a start-up to IPO, extensive experience in ERP system implementation as well as being CEO and founder of an Accounting Software business.
Miranda Werstiuk
Vice President Origination
Miranda has over 30 years’ experience in finance for the resources sector. She has worked across the spectrum of transaction mechanisms (equity, debt, and alternative financing), with a focus on complex structuring for creative and mutually beneficial solutions. She has relationships with private and public corporate issuers, as well as high net worth individual and institutional investors. Miranda regularly contributes to conferences including PDAC, 121 Mining, Mining Indaba, Mines & Money London, IMARC, and CIM. She is Chair of the Program Advisory Group for planetGOLD, which seeks to eliminate mercury used by artisanal and small gold miners, as well as being a long-standing participant and committee member of WIM Toronto.
Mark Pey
Strategic Relationships | Dubai office
Mark brings significant experience across financial services, technology, and digital physical gold management to Monetary Metals. His career background includes roles as Financial Services Industry Manager, Microsoft Corporation, where he ran Microsoft's financial services practice across Australia, New Zealand, and "English speaking Asia" (Singapore and Hong Kong). He was also Vice President, J.P. Morgan American Century, where he ran institutional investment sales for some of their largest clients including Intel Corporation. Lockheed-Martin, and Bechtel Corporation.
William Agner
Chief Technology Officer
William (Bill) Agner has a rich history of technical achievement. After graduating with degrees in Aerospace and Electronics Engineering, he started his career in the cell phone industry when he joined Qualcomm. There he accumulated well over 15 years of department and project leadership. Bill’s software experience is broad having designed and implemented systems for low-level embedded electronics to large global enterprise level applications. His long-standing interest in finance led him to join Monetary Metals in March of 2020.
Addison Quale
Vice President Relationship Management
Addison concentrated in economics at Harvard University and came to embrace libertarian thought while studying for a Master of Divinity at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary. Addison worked as a precious metals specialist at SchiffGold, with additional work experience at Cambridge Associates, a Boston based investment consulting firm.
Dickson Buchanan, Jr
Vice President Marketing
Prior to joining Monetary Metals, Dickson served as Senior Broker and Director of International Development at SchiffGold, where he helped a wide range of investors to obtain a strategic allocation into gold and silver both domestically and abroad. He received a Master‘s in Economics from King Juan Carlos University in Madrid, Spain where he studied under renowned Spanish economists Jesús Huerta de Soto and Juan Ramón Rallo.
Hiren Chandaria
Managing Director, Middle East and Asia Operations
Hiren Chandaria is a seasoned precious metals executive with over two decades of experience in gold investment, structured finance, and market development. He helped structure India’s first and largest gold savings fund, which won CNBC’s “Most Innovative Fund” award, while another fund he managed was ranked Bloomberg’s best-performing gold fund globally. A CFA Charterholder and Sloan Fellow of London Business School, Hiren leads Monetary Metals’ expansion across the Middle East and Asia.
Meet our board of directors
Jim Brown
Director
Jim lives in Jackson Hole and manages the Justice Brown Family Office. His finance career includes ten years as a stockbroker and 20 years as partner and portfolio manager at Brandes Investment Partners of San Diego. Prior to his finance career, he was an Air Force instructor pilot and an airline pilot. Jim is a Chartered Financial Analyst, holds an MBA from Harvard Business School and a BS in political science from the United States Air Force Academy.
Simon Guenzl
Director
Simon Guenzl has over 30 years of experience in finance, including over 20 years in private-markets investing. His experience includes advising on mergers & acquisitions at several leading Wall Street investment banks, making venture-capital investments in start-ups, and investing in private-equity and venture-capital funds on both a primary and secondary basis. He holds a law degree from the University of Western Australia and an MBA from the Wharton School of Business.
Meet our board of advisors
Ronald P. Stöferle
Advisor
Ronnie is managing partner of Incrementum AG and responsible for Research and Portfolio Management. Upon graduation, he joined the Research department of Erste Group, where he published his first “In Gold We Trust” report in 2007. The report has become one of the benchmark publications on gold, money, and inflation. Since 2013, he has held the position as reader at scholarium in Vienna, and he also speaks at Wiener Börse Akademie. In 2014, he co-authored the book “Austrian School for Investors” and in 2019 “Die Nullzinsfalle” (The Zero Interest Rate Trap). He is a member of the board of Tudor Gold, a Canadian exploration company, and an advisor to Matterhorn Asset Management, a global leader in asset preservation in the form of physical gold stored outside the banking system.
Mark Valek
Advisor
Mark is fund manager and partner of Incrementum AG. His passion is to apply interdisciplinary thinking to investment. He is particularly fascinated with the Austrian School of Economics, monetary history, and the foreseeable paradigm shift in the monetary system. Prior to the establishment of Incrementum AG, he was with Raiffeisen Capital Management for ten years, most recently as fund manager in the area of inflation protection and alternative investments. He gained entrepreneurial experience as co-founder of Philoro Edelmetalle GmbH. Since 2013, he has held the position as reader at scholarium in Vienna, and he also speaks at Wiener Börse Akademie. In 2014, he co-authored the book “Austrian School for Investors”.
Brent Johnson
Advisor
A globally recognized macroeconomic professional with over 25 years of financial markets experience, Brent is the CEO of Santiago Capital. Previously he served as Managing Director at BakerAvenue, a $2.5 billion wealth management practice where he advised several of the firm’s largest clients. Prior to that, he worked almost a decade in the private client group at Credit Suisse. Brent is widely known for his “Dollar Milkshake Theory” and speaks frequently on macroeconomics, currencies, and precious metals.
