Leigh Curyer

Leigh Curyer
Nationality	Australian-Canadian
Occupation	Mining executive, company founder, chief executive officer
Title	Chief Executive Officer
Employer	NexGen Energy Ltd
Known for	Founding NexGen Energy Ltd and advancing the Arrow uranium deposit in the Athabasca Basin

Leigh Curyer is an Australian-Canadian mining executive best known as the founder and Chief Executive Officer of NexGen Energy Ltd, a uranium development company headquartered in Vancouver, British Columbia. Under his leadership, NexGen identified and advanced the Arrow deposit at the Rook I project in Saskatchewan's Athabasca Basin, which has been described by independent technical reports as one of the largest and highest-grade uranium deposits ever discovered in Canada. Before uranium became the defining focus of his professional life, Curyer spent years working in corporate finance roles across the resources sector, building the financial and operational experience he would later apply to building NexGen from a junior explorer into one of the most closely watched uranium developers in the world.

Early Life

Leigh Curyer was born in Australia. Details about his specific birthplace, early upbringing, and family background have not been disclosed in publicly available sources. He subsequently relocated to Canada, where the majority of his professional career has taken place. He holds dual Australian and Canadian ties that are reflected in his work across both countries' resources sectors.

Career

Early Finance and Resources Work

Before founding NexGen Energy, Curyer held corporate finance and executive roles within the mining and resources industry. He served as Chief Financial Officer at Southern Cross Resources, a uranium exploration company that operated in the Athabasca Basin region of Saskatchewan. That position gave Curyer direct exposure to uranium geology, project financing structures, and the regulatory environment governing uranium development in Canada, experience that would prove foundational when he later established his own company. Southern Cross Resources was itself involved in Athabasca Basin exploration at a time when the basin was attracting renewed global attention as a source of high-grade uranium ore.

His time at Southern Cross also introduced him to the technical and commercial complexity of bringing a uranium project from grassroots exploration through to a point where it could attract institutional capital. The Athabasca Basin, which hosts some of the world's richest uranium deposits including the historic Cigar Lake and McArthur River mines, presented both significant opportunity and significant regulatory and community relations challenges. Curyer's grounding in those challenges shaped the approach he would later take with NexGen.

Founding NexGen Energy

Curyer founded NexGen Energy Ltd in 2012. The company was incorporated in British Columbia and listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange, subsequently also listing on the New York Stock Exchange to broaden its access to international institutional capital. At the time of its founding, the uranium market was in a prolonged downturn following the March 2011 Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster in Japan, which had triggered reactor shutdowns across multiple countries and depressed spot uranium prices sharply. Launching a uranium exploration company in that environment required a particular conviction about the long-term trajectory of nuclear energy as a low-carbon power source.

NexGen's initial strategy focused on acquiring exploration ground in the southwestern Athabasca Basin, a portion of the basin that had received comparatively less systematic modern exploration than the eastern corridor where major producers had historically concentrated their activity. The company assembled a land package in the Patterson Lake corridor, a structural zone that geologists had identified as prospective for high-grade uranium mineralization.

Discovery and Advancement of the Arrow Deposit

The Arrow deposit was discovered in 2014 on NexGen's Rook I property in the Patterson Lake corridor of the southwestern Athabasca Basin. The discovery hole returned results that immediately drew attention from the uranium exploration community, and subsequent drilling rapidly expanded the known dimensions of the deposit. By 2016, Arrow had grown through successive drill campaigns into one of the largest uranium deposits identified in Canada in decades.

A preliminary economic assessment completed for the Rook I project outlined a project of substantial scale. Successive technical studies, including a prefeasibility study and a feasibility study, further defined the deposit's economics and engineering requirements. The feasibility study, published in 2021, described a proposed underground mine capable of producing uranium concentrate at a scale and cost position that would rank it among the leading uranium operations globally if brought into production. Independent technical reports prepared under National Instrument 43-101, the Canadian securities standard for mineral resource disclosure, confirmed a mineral resource estimate and mineral reserve estimate that cemented Arrow's status as a globally significant deposit.

Curyer has consistently described Arrow's development as a project with implications beyond NexGen itself, situating it within the broader global energy transition and the increasing recognition of nuclear power as a source of firm, low-carbon baseload electricity. Under his leadership, the company has pursued environmental assessment approvals through both federal and provincial processes in Canada. NexGen submitted its environmental impact statement for the Rook I project to the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission and the Saskatchewan Environmental Assessment Branch, initiating a multi-year regulatory review process.

Regulatory Process and Government Policy Context

The Rook I project's regulatory review proceeded against a backdrop of shifting federal and provincial energy policy. Canada's Critical Minerals Strategy, published by the federal government in 2022, identified uranium as a critical mineral and outlined policy measures to support domestic development of critical mineral projects, including streamlined permitting processes and access to financing support. That policy framework provided a supportive context for NexGen's regulatory engagement, and Curyer has publicly noted the alignment between Rook I's development timeline and federal priorities around domestic uranium supply.

The Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission's Joint Review Panel for the Rook I project conducted public hearings beginning in 2023, a step that marked a significant procedural milestone in the regulatory process. Indigenous community engagement has been a central component of NexGen's regulatory submissions, and the company has executed Impact Benefit Agreements and other formal agreements with First Nations communities in the region whose traditional territories overlap with the Rook I project area.

NexGen in the Uranium Market Context

The broader uranium market context shifted materially during the years in which NexGen was advancing the Rook I project through feasibility and into regulatory review. Following years of depressed prices, uranium spot prices began recovering from 2020 onward, driven by a combination of supply curtailments, renewed global interest in nuclear power as a climate solution, and the emergence of physical uranium funds that purchased material directly from the spot market. By the mid-2020s, uranium prices had reached levels not seen since before the Fukushima accident, materially improving the projected economics of the Rook I project and increasing investor interest in NexGen's shares.

NexGen's market capitalization grew substantially during this period, reflecting both the improved uranium price environment and the technical derisking of the Arrow deposit through successive rounds of engineering and environmental work. Curyer has been a consistent public voice on the investment case for uranium and the role that new high-grade supply from the Athabasca Basin could play in meeting future reactor fuel requirements as countries expand nuclear capacity or extend the operational lives of existing reactors.

Leadership Approach and Public Presence

Curyer has represented NexGen in investor presentations, resource industry conferences, and media engagements across North America and internationally. He has spoken at forums focused on energy transition financing and critical minerals policy. His public communications have consistently emphasized technical rigor, community and Indigenous engagement, and the long-duration nature of the uranium development business as factors that distinguish the NexGen approach to project development.

He has also been quoted in coverage by major financial and resource industry publications discussing the regulatory milestones and capital requirements associated with bringing a greenfield uranium mine of Arrow's scale into production. Under his tenure, NexGen secured financings from institutional investors including strategic participants from the nuclear power sector, transactions that were reported in financial press coverage of the uranium development space.

Recognition

NexGen Energy has received recognition within the mining and resources industry for the scale and quality of the Arrow deposit and for the technical work underpinning the Rook I feasibility study. The Northern Miner, a Canadian industry publication that has covered the Canadian mining sector since 1915, has cited the Arrow discovery among the significant uranium discoveries of the post-Fukushima exploration period. The project's technical reports have been referenced in broader industry analyses of global uranium supply development.

Curyer was named to lists of notable executives in the uranium and critical minerals sectors in coverage appearing in mining trade publications during the period in which uranium's role in the energy transition received elevated media and policy attention.