Lance Taylor
Lance I. Taylor
President, Geotemps, Inc. / Founder, Geopros, Inc.
Lance I. Taylor is the President and CEO of Geotemps Inc., the Nevada-based corporation founded in 1986 specializing in personnel services for the mining, geotechnical, and energy industries in the U.S. and abroad. He is also co-founder and director of Geotemps International, ULC, a U.S. based corporation holding a Canadian subsidiary with previous offices in Vancouver, B.C., White Horse, and Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, and is the founder and president of Geopros, Inc., specializing in broad-spectrum direct placement recruitment and career services within the mining and geotechnical industries. Additionally, Mr. Taylor presently serves as chairman of Selex Resources, Ltd., a private Ontario company with a wholly owned U.S. subsidiary currently managing (gold and copper) mineral interests in Nevada.
Representing 3 generations of mining in Nevada, he is a former trustee and committee chair of the Northwest Mining Association (the American Exploration and Mining Association), and is currently an Executive Advisory Board Member of the Mackay School of Earth Science and Engineering. As Geotemps approaches its 32nd year of business, it enjoys an established reputation for supporting a multitude of industry professionals recruited, assisted, or employed over the course of three decades – and in at least in one case, three generations of geotechnical professionals employed from a single family. Further, Mr. Taylor (through both Geotemps and Geopros) is a traditional supporter of the Society of Mining, Metallurgy, and Exploration (SME), the Society of Economic Geologists (SEG), the American Institute of Professional Geologists (AIPG), the Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada (PDAC), the Association of Mineral Exploration of British Columbia (AME BC), the Women’s Mining Coalition, the Nevada Mining Association (as well as other state associations), The Nevada Mineral Exploration Coalition (NMEC), and other regional and technical societies – including the Geological Society of Nevada (GSN) – regularly since Geotemps began in 1986.
In local support of the recruitment and retention of necessary geologists and geotechnical professionals, Lance Taylor has directed various donations and established scholarships to The University of Nevada, Reno, Mackay School of Earth Sciences and Engineering, as partly described in the Mackay School of Mines 100th anniversary commemorative book Mackay Memories:
“(Taylor) supports various Mackay events and fundraising efforts including the Annual Intercollegiate Mining Competition, the John Mackay Club, student field trips, and the sponsorship of Mackay student’s annual membership to the Geologic Society of Nevada… and is a sponsor of various industry and community events, including the Nevada Mining Association Annual Safety Awards… and the Governor’s annual ‘Tin Cup Tea’ in support of the Nevada State Museum and the W.M. Keck Earth Science and Mineral Engineering Museum. Lance Taylor was honored with the title ‘Mackay Volunteer of The Year’ in 1999.”
In further support of industry sustainability, Mr. Taylor has participated in organized efforts to inform state and federal leaders of the necessary benefits of the minerals industry (and of related industry personnel): through the financial support of the Women’s Mining Coalition D.C. fly-in efforts, through direct participation in the Nevada Mining Association’s organized day of legislative conversations (‘Geotemps Day’, 2013), and through participation in the NWMA 2007 D.C. group ‘fly-in’ legislative communication effort.
In support of the ongoing cause of necessary safety awareness, Geotemps and Geopros have provided recent and repeated corporate sponsorship of both the Nevada Mining Association Annual Safety Awards and the Utah Mining Association Annual Safety Awards in which member companies and their employees are awarded for exceptional efforts in mine safety and reclamation.
Most recently, Mr. Taylor and family have established the Gordon C. Frisby Excellence in Safety Innovation Award which seeks to “carry forward and inspire academic work and/or research in the spirit of a career professional dedicated to the awareness and preservation of mining and geotechnical related health and safety… This endowed fund recognizes students at the Mackay School of Earth Sciences and Engineering whose academic work enhances and/or directly supports safe methods and practices within an industrial mining or geotechnical related environment.”
In 2015 Lance Taylor was honored (with his father, Geotemps founder and GSN life membership recipient Lyle Taylor) as a co-recipient of the award for Distinguished Service to Mackay. As explained by Dennis Bryan, then Senior Vice President of Development, Western Lithium, and a State of Nevada Commissioner for Mineral Resources: “Lance, the third generation of this important mining family, has been a leader in recognizing excellence in mine safety. His companies sponsor the annual mine safety and health awards presented by the Nevada Mining Association every year at its annual convention. And through Lance’s personal generosity as well as the investment of Geotemps and Geopros, Mackay students benefit from an endowed Geotemps scholarship and now the Gordon C. Frisby Excellence in Safety Innovation Award.”
On Nov. 17, 2016, Geotemps, Inc. was recognized on the floor of the United States Senate for its historic support of Nevada’s minerals industry. During his statement, Senator Dean Heller called on his fellow Senators and Nevadans to join him in commemorating Geotemps, Inc. saying, “I am proud to honor Geotemps’ significant contributions to the mining industry in the State of Nevada, throughout our Nation, and across the globe.”
“Without the determination and persistence of [Geotemps] founders and entire staff, Nevada would not have experienced the excellent growth we see today. I ask my colleagues and all Nevadans to join me in congratulating Geotemps on its 30th anniversary. This institution has advanced Nevada’s mining industry, and I am honored to recognize this important milestone.”
Heller’s statement was entered into the U.S. congressional record during the second session of the 114th congress, and Lance Taylor was presented with a signed transcript of Senator Heller’s statement at the AEMA annual convention in Reno.
As an enthusiastic corporate supporter of GSN, Lance Taylor has traditionally sponsored monthly meetings, field trips, golf tournaments and BBQ’s, The GSN Foundation (and symposium personnel), and UNR/Mackay student memberships ‘in effort to ensure necessary participation by the next generation of geologists’. In 2010 Lance was honored by the GSN for ‘Generous Support of Student Membership’. Further, since the early 2000’s Geotemps has intermittently subsidized, in part or in whole, the various salary related employment costs of the GSN Executive Manager position (and related recruitments), and has fully done so since 2009.
Lance consistently claims that he greatly enjoys the company of what he considers his extended family of various GSN members, adopted brothers, sisters, and ‘good uncles’ that he has either long ago worked for, with, or may have eventually recruited or employed. And he has occasionally been inspired to support of GSN in unconventional ways: Lance is proud to have been instrumental in the surprise entry of one of Alan Coyner’s lost shoes in a GSN Foundation silent auction (misplaced earlier that evening), and during at least one memorable GSN Christmas party live auction, he engaged in the traditional bidding war over a splatter of gold with the usual friendly adversaries (possibly Rich Delong and Dieter Krewedl) – and having finally won a popular specimen, immediately donated it back, exclaiming “Do it again!”
Having recognized (in both a personal and a professional capacity) the ‘unique creative temperament of those thinking abstractly regarding the necessary building blocks of society’, he has recently threatened to change his professional title to ‘Geologist Whisperer’.
Beyond the mining industry, Lance Taylor has also supported (personally or through corporate donations) the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation (JDRF), The Boys and Girls Club, Ronald McDonald House Charities of Northern Nevada, The American Cancer Society, The Reno Philharmonic Orchestra, and The Nevada Museum of Art.