Meet Our Speakers:
👤Lindsey Schultz, Our Host, CEO of MRC Recruiting.
🎙️Jack Kellner, Senior Director of Regeneration & Co-Founder of CanaryWaves
In this energizing episode of Ore-atory: Elevating Mining Minds, host Lindsey Schultz sits down with geologist turned mining engineer and founder, Jack Kellner, to explore how humor, human centered design, and smart data can reshape mining for the better. Jack splits his time between two ventures, Canary Waves, a voice intelligence platform for mine safety and operations, and Regeneration, a public benefit company focused on tailings reprocessing and landscape restoration, where he is seconded from Rio Tinto.
Jack’s origin story traces an unconventional path, from a small liberal arts school and an early love of geology fieldwork, to environmental consulting, frac sand exploration, and pivotal operational roles across Nevada Gold Mines. A minor safety incident at Long Canyon, captured on two way radio, sparked the core idea for Canary Waves, if the human voice carries the context behind production dips and hazards, why are we only listening after something goes wrong? Canary Waves ingests radio audio, structures the content with AI, and layers it over existing site systems like fleet management and SAP. The result, the why behind KPIs becomes visible, recurring issues can be flagged and trended, then pushed toward predictive insights. Jack emphasizes a light footprint, network agnostic deployment, minimal new dashboards, and hyper specific AI that solves real problems.
Switching to Regeneration, Jack outlines a different kind of tailings play. Born from Rio Tinto’s closure team and the NGO Resolve, Regeneration begins with stakeholder first planning, visioning with communities, First Nations, and local partners to define success, sometimes as specifically as the return of a culturally important medicinal flower. The team then backcasts that vision into design criteria and costed plans. Rather than forcing a single technology to fit every pile, Regeneration focuses on fit for purpose process trains, modular execution, innovative offtakes, and business model shifts that create value by reducing liabilities. With Apple as a founding member, the supply chain story matters, restoration is not an add on, it is the mission.
The conversation widens to talent and culture. Jack argues mining needs to communicate like humans, not only as balance sheets, and he champions gamification as a gateway to grow the talent pool. Inspired by Farming Simulator, he imagines a modern mining sim that teaches real unit operations, partners with OEMs, and lets the public experience 80 percent of how mines work. He challenges a reflexive de risking mindset, proposing success criteria that cultivate smart starts and iterative growth, rather than killing promising ideas too early. His parting advice, start small, own your niche, and bring your whole self to work, because progress and retention both start with people.
⏱️ TIMESTAMPS: ⏱️
01:02 Mining Needs More Humanity
02:14 Jack’s Origin Story
06:50 From Geology to Mining Engineering
11:36 Canary Waves Origin
15:40 Human Voice in Safety Tech
19:11 Integrations and Context for KPIs
23:40 Regeneration Overview
27:12 Community-First Tailings Strategy
35:17 Mining Influencers and Memes
36:23 Gamifying Mining Talent
44:22 Rethinking “De-Risking”
50:21 Rethinking Recruiting
51:44 Closing Advice
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