Chemists have formulas for everything. Beatrice Pierre, 26, even has one for choosing a career.

"You're either a visual person, or you're very creative, or you're a people person," says Pierre, a metallurgical engineer at Falconbridge's zinc plant in Timmins.

"You know in high school what kind of person you are, but you may not know which career has the elements that suit you."

Beatrice, originally from Haiti, knew in Grade 9 that she wanted to focus on science because she "was mesmerized by how things work."

Her parents urged her to become a doctor or a lawyer, but "with science, I was always sure, so it was definitely me," she says. "If you're the kind of person who needs things to be tangible, hands-on, science is the way to go."

Beatrice enrolled in a Biochemistry program at the University of Ottawa, but she realized that biochemical processes take place in our bodies. She couldn't see them. And that still wasn't her.

The formula needed a bit of tweaking.

Colour, texture
Beatrice decided that Chemical Engineering would be more "her."

"You do experiments. You see things. There's colour and texture," she says.

So, prolonging her education for an extra year and half, she graduated with two degrees instead of one.

Living in Ottawa, the mining industry was the furthest thing from her mind until a Falconbridge recruiter showed up on campus.

Beatrice was impressed.

"I never took any courses in Chemical Engineering that pertained to mining, but I knew what a process was and I knew the basic principles."

She learned the word "ore" (rock with sufficient mineral content to mine at a profit) her first day on the job.

Falconbridge puts all new engineering hires through a two-year Engineer in Training (EIT) program, rotating them through its mills, smelters and research facilities in Sudbury, Timmins and Rouyn-Noranda, Quebec.

Beatrice fit right in.

"In a smaller community, you have a better sense of who you are, and people are more relaxed," she notes.

Zinc plant
Following her two-year training program, Falconbridge offered her a job at its Timmins zinc plant and gave her responsibility for optimizing a new precious metals circuit designed to capture gold and silver byproducts that would otherwise be disposed of.

She spends a lot of time in the plant, monitoring processes and, once again, tweaking formulas.

"You need to get out there and talk to the operators. They know a lot more about the plant than you do. They've worked here for 20 or 25 years. You may come in as an engineer with your head as big as the world and a big ego, but the operators are the heart of the plant.

"Some people may be under a misconception that engineers work alone in their offices with computers and calculators, but that's not the case," she says. "You have to be good with people."

Another misconception Beatrice is eager to dispel is that mining is environmentally unfriendly.

"All through high school and university, the focus was on clean and green, so when my friends found out I was working in a zinc plant, they said 'You're in mining? You pollute the environment?'

"But once you're in the industry, you know that the priorities are safety, the environment and production."

It's not as if we could suddenly shut down the industry and do without nickel, copper or zinc.

"Without metals we wouldn't have batteries for hearing aids and pacemakers," she says. "Your sink at home is made from stainless steel. And, if you're a drummer in a band, your drums are made of metal."

Beatrice is optimizing the precious metals circuit and her career at the same time.

"It's fun. It's a challenge. I never have a day where I go home and say, Gee, that was boring."

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