Leveraging international talent

Growing up in Chile, Francisca Puebla Careaga heard countless stories from her grandmother about her great-grandfather, who worked as a coal miner in the country his whole life.

“I always say that I have the mines in my veins,” Puebla Careaga said, beaming. Her family lore, coupled with learning about Chile’s history and economy—which were heavily shaped by the mining industry and have been an important part of the Chilean identity—inspired her to study mining engineering at Universidad de Concepción.

However, despite her family history, passion for mining and mining engineering degree, Puebla Careaga struggled to find work in mining engineering after graduating in April 2022, and instead accepted a job as a technical data reporter.

“I was working on a mine site, but in the construction area, developing a ramp in the mine. It was nothing related to [what I studied],” said Puebla Careaga. “I didn’t need to think about drill and blast, [mine planning] or production. It was only shotcrete and stuff that I’ve never learned before. It’s always good to learn something new, but it wasn’t my field.”

Pamela Osorio Corales faced a similar experience. While studying civil mining engineering at Universidad Andrés Bello in Chile—which she graduated from in August 2022—she had trouble securing an internship in her field and settled for one as a trainee engineer in the renewable energy industry instead.

The gender gap

Their situation is common for female mining engineers in Chile. According to a 2013 report from the Intergovernmental Forum on Mining, Minerals, Metals and Sustainable Development, titled “Women and the Mine of the Future,” Chile’s mining industry in 2022 was composed of 10 per cent women, compared to Canada’s 19 per cent in 2021. For Heather Gamble, the co-founder and CEO of the Artemis Project, a program designed to accelerate business outcomes for female entrepreneurs in the mining industry, it was her call to action.

Gamble heard from her company’s Chile chapter that women were encountering hurdles finding work in their field. According to Gamble, despite graduating from top-ranking schools with high academic standings, many female mining engineering graduates in Chile would submit dozens of applications without much luck.

“These women have just graduated and they just kept coming up against a wall,” Gamble said. “Very few of them were even getting interviews. They were taking jobs that had nothing to do with their engineering degrees.”

In response, she co-founded the Artemisa Mining Challenge in 2021 with Helen Krissilas, founder of Krissilas Group, a recruitment firm that specializes in placing women in mining and STEM jobs.

The Artemisa Mining Challenge aims to facilitate Canadian mining companies, which are facing labour shortages and thinning cohorts of mining engineering students, to hire Latin American female mining engineers.

“We all know that there’s a talent crisis going on [in mining] and most mining companies have made steady commitments in terms of raising their levels of diversity because it improves performance,” said Gamble. “[The Artemisa Mining Challenge] is really feeding into that and helping [mining companies] get qualified candidates to begin their careers and foster their development. These young girls tend to look for constant opportunities to learn and grow, so it’s a perfect talent match.”

In June 2024, the Artemisa Mining Challenge launched the 24 by 24 campaign, which aims to boost their current recruitment efforts to hire a total of 24 female mining engineers from Latin American countries by the end of 2024.

Since the Artemisa Mining Challenge was founded, a total of seven women have been successfully hired as mining engineers in training by four mining companies: Puebla Careaga and Osorio Corales were hired by Rio Tinto in January, two were hired by Iamgold, one by New Gold and two more by Eldorado Gold. Gamble said the mining engineers commit to staying in Canada for at least three years once selected by the Artemisa Mining Challenge.

Making the journey

Osorio Corales and Puebla Careaga learned of the Artemisa Mining Challenge through its partner Red Ingenieras de Minas (RIM) Chile, a non-profit organization that promotes women in the country’s mining industry.

Osorio Corales currently splits her time between the Rio Tinto office in…