Josh Hawes brings AmForge a rare combination of critical-minerals operating experience, Wall Street capital-markets expertise, public-company governance, and strategic finance. He has worked across global hedge funds, buy-side and sell-side investment platforms, public-company transactions, board governance, and company-building, with particular depth in commodities, advanced technologies, and strategic supply-chain development.
Josh has held senior executive and board/advisory roles across several critical-minerals and rare-earth platforms, including USA Rare Earth (NASDAQ: USAR), American Resources Corporation (NASDAQ: AREC), and ReElement Technologies. At USA Rare Earth, he served as Chief of Staff and later Chief Strategy Officer, helping lead capital raising, organizational growth, market penetration, and the company’s transition toward a domestic mine-to-magnet supply chain. His work included supporting the company’s magnet manufacturing transition in Stillwater, Oklahoma, advancing strategic partnerships, and helping build a North American rare-earth magnet supply-chain network outside of China.
Josh also serves as an independent director of American Resources Corporation, where he has chaired the audit and compensation committees and supported corporate strategy, capital-markets planning, governance, and the company’s expansion in critical minerals and resource development. Through his involvement with ReElement Technologies, he brings additional exposure to rare-earth and battery-material refining, recycling, and circular supply-chain strategies, including technologies designed to recover critical and rare earth elements from end-of-life products, magnets, lithium-ion batteries, coal-based waste streams, and other strategic feedstocks.
Before his critical-minerals work, Josh held executive leadership roles at investment firms including Delta1X and Hawking Alpha. He has led entrepreneurial capital integration for companies by combining Wall Street financial architecture with growth-company execution, helping businesses structure capital, enter new markets, and scale revenue. His experience spans commodities, investment banking, public and private securities, hedge funds, strategic finance, and transaction structuring.
At AmForge, Josh’s advisory role is centered on critical-minerals strategy, capital markets, investor positioning, merchant-banking structures, and transaction architecture. His background strengthens AmForge’s ability to evaluate rare-earth and critical-mineral opportunities, structure complex partnerships, present credibly to strategic investors, and connect national-priority industrial projects with private capital. He gives AmForge not only capital-markets credibility, but direct operating and governance experience in the exact rare-earth and critical-minerals sectors the company is working to scale.