Honoring our 2026 Ankh Award Winner: Oriol Guixà
Oriol Guixà has spent more than 45 years championing copper - its properties, its potential, and its role in building a more sustainable world. The Copper Club is proud to honor his extraordinary contributions.
The Ankh Award is The Copper Club’s highest honor.
Named for the ankh, a symbol for copper dating back to ancient Egypt, the award was first presented in 1962 to honor outstanding individual achievements in and contributions to the copper industry.
Presented at the Annual Dinner, it recognizes individuals whose leadership, contributions, and service have helped shape the copper community and move the industry forward.
Recent Ankh Award Winners
-
![A smiling middle-aged man with a bald head and gray beard, wearing a pinstripe suit, in front of a blurred background.]()
Bernard “Bernie” C. Schilberg
2025 Ankh Award Winner
Bernie Schilberg has spent nearly five decades building Prime Materials Recovery into the largest secondary copper processor in the US, a company that generates $3.5 billion in annual revenue and processes over 60 million pounds of non-ferrous metals every month. His commitment to responsible production and the circular economy has helped establish copper recycling as a cornerstone of the industry's future, not an afterthought. His vision for vertically integrating scrap competency into fabrication has set a model for others.
-
![A woman with shoulder-length blonde hair, smiling, wearing a navy blue pinstripe blazer, standing outdoors next to a glass building wall.]()
Kathleen L. Quirk
2024 Ankh Award Winner
Kathleen Quirk has spent 35 years at Freeport-McMoRan, rising through finance and corporate development to CFO, President, and ultimately CEO of one of the world's largest publicly traded copper producers, with operations spanning the Grasberg district in Indonesia, Morenci in Arizona, and Cerro Verde in Peru. Her leadership has anchored Freeport's commitment to responsible copper production and shared value with host communities, advocating for more than 70,000 workers and the families and places they call home. Her vision for pairing innovation with people-first leadership has set a model for how the industry can grow while delivering lasting benefits to all stakeholders.
-
![A middle-aged man with short brown hair smiling, dressed in a dark blue suit, white shirt, and a blue patterned tie, standing against a gray background.]()
Don Lindsay
2023 Ankh Award Winner
Don Lindsay spent 18 years as President and CEO of Teck Resources, Canada's largest diversified mining company, where he built one of the industry's strongest copper growth pipelines, including the transformative QB2 project in northern Chile that positions Teck among the world's leading copper producers. His leadership of the Copper & Health program advanced antimicrobial copper as a frontline defense against infection in healthcare and public spaces, while his sustainability commitments established Teck as a global benchmark for ESG performance. His vision for copper's central role in the low-carbon transition has set a model for how the industry can help build a cleaner future.
All Ankh Award Winners
2020s
2010s
2000s
1990s
1980s
1970s
1960s
The Ankh Award has been presented annually since 1962. In 1994 and 2019, anniversary years were observed with a historical review in place of an individual award.