Michael Silver (CEO)

Early life and education

Michael Silver was born and raised in Los Angeles, California. He attended the University of Southern California (USC) receiving a B.A. degree in Psychobiology in 1978 and then attended USC’s JD/MBA dual degree program graduating in 1982. He practiced corporate law for 10 years, specializing in mergers & acquisitions.

Business career

In the mid 90s Silver founded American Elements as a chemical manufacturer and metals refiner of rare earths and other critical metals serving the U.S. mining industry. Upon the near simultaneous closing of the Unocal/Molycorp rare earth mine in Mountain Pass, California and the Rhodia rare earth refinery in Freeport, Texas, ending U.S. rare earths metal production, he flew to Baotou, Inner Mongolia and established one of the first post-cold war supply chains from Inner Mongolian mines directly to industrial end users in the U.S., Europe and Japan. Over the next 15 years he built American Elements facilities in Salt Lake City, Utah; Monterrey, Mexico; Baotou, China; and Manchester, England and expanded production to include newly discovered elemental forms of advanced materials such as nanoparticles, green technology & alternative energy materials and advanced military alloys. By 2011, the company's materials catalog had grown to include over 10,000 items.

Philanthropic activities

Silver established the not for profit American Elements' Academics & Periodicals Department in 2006 to support high school, college and graduate school education in high technology and materials science. Since its founding, the Department has sponsored over 400 academic and industry conferences in 25 countries in fields such as space exploration, nanotechnology, green technologies, solar energy and robotics. In 2011, it co-sponsored with the National Science Foundation a four-part PBS TV series on NOVA entitled "Making Stuff" examining the world of materials science. Silver funded and hosted a delegation in 2011 from the UCLA Medical Center in Los Angeles, California to the Inner Mongolian Medical Teaching College in Baotou, China which has led to student and teacher exchanges and the development of a joint AIDS program. He is a member of the Board of Directors of the Institute of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles and donates material support to the artist-in-residence program at the UCLA Hammer Museum and the conservation departments at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the Getty Institute. He has also made in-kind donations of artwork to the National Museum of African American History & Culture and serves on the Villa Council of the Getty Museum.

Writing and speeches

Silver writes and speaks on several topics including:

In 2010, Silver coined the phrases “Innovation Distortion” to describe efforts to avoid the use of a given element solely because of concerns that it may be hoarded by nations with resource control of that material and “The Environmentalism Catch-22” to describe the dilemma faced by the environmental movement which both supports a green technology future reliant on solar energy, wind power, electric cars and fuel cells and concurrently opposes the mining of the critical metals from which these technologies are manufactured. In October 2014, Silver's editorial discussing these ideas was published in the Wall Street Journal.

Silver coined the phrase "Sovereign Monopolies" to describe nations that have a sufficient percent of the world's reserves of a given metal or mineral that they can dictate its cost and force industries requiring the metal to move production to their country to obtain preferential pricing.