Rute Silva

Biography

Rue Silva completed her master’s degree in Geological Engineering at the Lisbon Nova School of science in 2001. She began her career as a Geotechnical Engineering in the tunnel construction of the Lisbon Metro, Blue line 3-year infrastructure project. This was a major development in the city of Lisbon. In 2007, Rute began her mining journey with Sika Portugal as Head of Market Development, Tunneling and Mining, developing a strong market in the mining and tunneling business for Sika Portugal. As she says, she didn’t choose mining, mining chose her!

In 2021, during the middle of the COVD-19 pandemic, Rute moved to Sudbury, Ontario, Canada with her family to join Sika Canada’s STM team as a Technical Sales Engineer. Sika’s STM (Shotcrete, Tunneling & Mining) business unit was formed after Sika acquired King Packaged Materials Co. In this position, she often works in the field with ground control teams, helping them improve their solutions and cope with daily challenges. She enjoys the opportunity to work at different mine sites with different people. She worked on the development and mining market approach for shotcrete reinforced with macro synthetic fibers. She was a key player in introducing this solution to the Sika product portfolio and implementing it on a functioning site.

Having been raised in Lisbon, where she also started her career, Rute was not expecting the challenges she faced when moving to Sudbury. These challenges included logistics, weather restrictions, and navigating Canada’s geography, to name a few. She also did not expect the differences in infrastructure, safety standards, and technology between mine sites in Canada versus Europe. In the last year, she witnessed a significant change in the mindset of management and underground workers to upgrade their quality control programs and working conditions. Other differences to which she had to adapt are ‘street’ English, meal routines, food habits, bears and moose, driving through snowstorms, etc.

For many years, Rue was the only woman in the Sika mining group, at customer mine sites, and during meetings. She found this challenging because she felt she constantly had to prove herself even when working alongside men with similar or less experience. In this type of environment, she would often doubt herself, but she was able to build up her self-confidence and learned to trust her knowledge, allowing her to thrive in the industry. The mining industry has gone through a significant change in recent years. The mine sites have become more gender-inclusive, and the culture has become more accommodating to equity and inclusion. As a mother of two girls, she feels it is important to encourage young women to pursue careers in science and engineering. The aim is to inspire young women and girls to imagine themselves doing amazing and creative things and becoming leaders in the respective communities. She hopes the decision she made 16 years ago to work in a male-dominated industry and being able to succeed will serve as an example for her daughters and their friends.