Benjamin J. Cox
Ben Murphy
Benjamin is a problem-solver who hates red tape and loves tough questions. After 25 years straddling mining, natural capital, and business education, he built B² to cut through the noise and deliver answers faster than the paperwork piles up. His superpower? Spotting value where everyone else just sees “waste”—whether that’s tailings, water rights, or overlooked data.
Before launching B², Benjamin co-founded programs at UBC’s BRIMM that trained the next generation of mining leaders, advised companies from junior explorers to global majors, and published on everything from copper recovery to decarbonization. People kept saying “ask B²,” so he finally turned it into a business.
Benjamin thrives in short bursts: a workshop, a second opinion, a model that reframes the problem. He’s allergic to long proposals and would rather jump straight to the solution. When not hacking monocultures or running natural capital games, you’ll find him outdoors with his kids, tinkering with big ideas, or dreaming up the next way to make ESG actually profitable.
Ben has spent most of his career inside the engine room of the mining industry — running concentrators in Australia, Indonesia, Ireland, and South Africa before moving into leadership roles with some of the world’s top mineral processing suppliers. Along the way, he became known for connecting dots across silos: from flotation plants to boardrooms, from engineers to executives.
During the pandemic, Ben co-founded the Executive Micro-Certificate in Economic Leadership in Mining at UBC’s BRIMM, helping hundreds of professionals think differently about economics, leadership, and collaboration in mining. He blends deep technical expertise —comminution, flotation, gravity separation —with a gift for making people actually talk to each other (and get things done).
At B², Ben brings the balance of operations grit and executive vision. He thrives on partnerships, loves problem-solving workshops, and has a knack for finding leverage points that others miss.
When he’s not troubleshooting systems or teaching, you’ll find him out on a trail, coaching softball, or scribbling ideas on how to make mining more value-driven and future-ready.