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Bill Sercombe B.A.Sc. 1978 (Geological Engineering)It was good to visit the campus last October and meet a fewfamiliar faces at the Deparment’s Faculty Club reception.The new year has now come and not much else is new sohere is an update.I’m still working in Houston for a couple of more years ona Deep Water Gulf of Mexico project until my son finisheslaw school in Florida and I can finally depart the southeastU.S.I almost retired last year and went back to do a degree atWestern in my hometown London on my personal interestin mass extinctions. That fell through with the law school“event” as I didn’t want to be far from my son. I did presenta poster on extinctions in Athens at the A.A.P.G. conventionwhere it was well received and I was invited to re-presentit in South Africa for 2008.I’ve also joined a couple of guys from Calgary in a smalloil company start up and we have several projects goingand we hope something will actually come of them in thenext couple of years....we shall see......1990’sNawojka Wachowiak B.Sc. 1997, M.Sc. 2001 (SpoonerGroup)After graduation Nawojka spent several years with HSBCas a commodity analyst, culminating with a five year stayin New York City. She is pleased to have returned home toToronto where she is now an equity research analyst withBMO Capital Markets (but misses NYC).Kimberley Scully B.Sc. (Hons) Geology Specialist 9T8;M.Sc. 0T0 (Supervisor: Dan Schulze).Just days after defending my M.Sc. thesis during earlyJanuary 2000, I jetted to Victoria, BC to begin a Ph.D. inmantle petrology with Dante Canil at the University ofVictoria. Even though living near the beach in Victoria wasidyllic, after 2.5 years I realized a life of research wasn’tfor me, so I headed back east to Peterborough to be ProjectLeader of Diamond Services at Lakefield Research. Underthe tutelage of Bruce Jago (U of T grad too!) I quicklylearned heaps about interpreting microdiamond data. Ieven saw a few big diamonds. After one year with Lakefield,I was offered a project geologist position with BHPBilliton Minerals exploration in Vancouver, so it was backto the west coast!Heather Macdonald, Christine Norcross, Michelle Joyette, BrendaMacMurray and Nawojka Wachowaik at the 2007 Alumni Receptionat the Fairmont Royal YorkI spent the next 2 years variably living in Vancouver andNaujaat (Repulse Bay), on the north-west coast of Hudson,right on the Arctic Circle. It was a fantastic two years, duringwhich our exploration program expanded from me anda little drill crew to a 50-person camp. I didn’t spend a lotof time doing geology with so many people to manage andcoordinate, but I enjoyed every minute of my time in thearctic.After so many summers spent shivering up north, I felt likeI’d won the lottery when I was offered the chance to moveto South Africa to work with our Africa exploration team.I moved to Johannesburg in March 2005 and took up therole of project generation for diamonds for BHPB SouthAfrica. Contrary to popular perception, Johannesburg is afabulous city and nowhere near as dangerous as you firstthink. South Africans are such wonderfully friendly peoplethat I made close friends in no time (although I’m sure myfunny accent and Canadian sense of humour helped). Thebulk of my work was based in Johannesburg, but I did getthe chance to camp in the Kalahari Desert of Botswana fora soil-sampling program (we woke up one morning to findmother and cub lion tracks through the camp!), and twotrips to our advanced exploration program in north-eastAngola (where we have an armoured bulldozer to createroads because of the very high concentration of explosiveremnants of war on our tenements). I can’t exaggeratehow much I got out of working and living in Africa. It isa challenging place, but the people are so strong and willno doubt grow and develop with the increasing presence ofinternational mining companies over the next decade.After a year in Joburg I was offered the rather prestigiousjob of being the Technical Assistant (some would say “bagcarrier”)to the Global Exploration Manager and the VP ofExploration, so I was relocated to Melbourne, Australia.The position was particularly challenging as I was throwninto being a mining analyst with absolutely no experience.I did, however, have the privilege of assisting in developingexploration strategy, reviewing projects with the explora-15