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First Things First by The First Things First Alaska Foundation (FTFAF) is broadcast monthly on KINY on Saturday at 9 a.m. and on KJNO on Sunday at 9 a.m. Each episode explores the balance Alaskans face: protecting our state's rugged beauty and vast wilderness while advocating for sustainable economic growth through responsible natural resource management.
With thousands of jobs lost in the past decades due to restrictive regulations, First Things First raises vital questions about the future of Alaska’s economy. Can we preserve our cherished landscapes, waterways, and wildlife while fostering prosperity for generations to come?
Join FTFAF as we explore essential areas for Southeast Alaska’s growth—highlighting education, advocacy, and smart development.
Time once again for another First Things First podcast. I am Danno, one of your hosts, and we are diving into mining month. I can't believe we're already here at May. And, of course, it just makes sense to bring the amazing people of Kensington here into the studio. But first, got to introduce Frank Bergstrom.
Speaker 1:He is the president of the board for First Things First and a minor himself. Frank, welcome to the studio.
Speaker 2:Thank you very much. Pleasure to be here.
Speaker 1:Then we got Don Habiger. He is your executive director of First Things First joining us over the phone this time, but still here in spirit. Welcome, Don.
Speaker 3:Well, thank you, Dano. Nice to be here.
Speaker 1:Yeah. And then we have Ray Kine. She is the mine manager at Kensington and a very impressive bio that Rochelle actually wrote up for her, but I think it's really important she serves as the president of the woman in mining Alaska chapter. I thought that was really cool. So welcome, Ray.
Speaker 4:Thank you very much.
Speaker 1:And we have Rochelle Lindley. She is your external affairs manager at Kensington as well. So welcome.
Speaker 5:Thanks for the invite.
Speaker 1:So here we are Frank, Don, we are already in May. Can you believe it? We're gonna have mining month ahead of us. You start to see all the really cool events taking place. We have gold rush days that are gonna be coming up.
Speaker 1:So, Don, I'm gonna kinda hand this off to you because mining is a big deal here in Southeast Alaska and Juneau.
Speaker 3:It absolutely is a big deal. And I just wanna start the program, talking about First Things First, purpose. Our mission is, public education on a strong Southeast Southeast economy, through responsible economic development and natural resource management. And mining is absolutely a pillar of our economy. And so this is a great opportunity, may be mining month, to talk about and highlighting mining.
Speaker 3:And just as a quick program outline, we're gonna look at this topic and the importance of mining to our communities kind of through the look of mining in exploration, operational, and then even closure. So we'll try to get all that in, and we'll I think we're gonna have a great program. But to begin with, I'm gonna do this. I'm gonna hand it over to Ray. So, Ray, I'm queuing you up.
Speaker 3:But one of the things in her bio that really struck me was the fact that she started looking into mining at a young age. So Ray, even though we're gonna talk about exploration and some of those things, can you start just by talking to our audience a little bit about your interest in mining?
Speaker 4:Yeah, sure. I think I discovered that I wanted to be a geologist all the way back in grade three or grade four, which I think is pretty unusual. Most kids at that age want to be a nurse or a firefighter, and I wanted to be a geologist. I came to that because my mother met a geologist through her line of work and came home and told me that there was such a thing as a career where you could spend your job looking at rocks. And I just thought that that was great because I was hauling home all sorts of rocks from every family camping trip we went on, much to the chagrin of my father who was usually helping me cart them around.
Speaker 4:So yeah, I knew I wanted to get into geology from a young age. I finished high school, immediately went into university, started a degree program in geology. When I came out of that, I went into exploration, not directly into mining. I had a lot of amazing experiences with that. And then, yeah, I came up to Juneau.
Speaker 4:Kensington's the first and only mine I've ever worked at, but I haven't looked back. I've been there twelve years and it's been absolutely wonderful.
Speaker 2:That's amazing that you had such a premonition about what you wanted to do. Mean, I started college, it was sociology, philosophy and poly science. Of course, that only lasted a quarter and then I took geology 101 and I gone.
Speaker 4:Loved rocks and from a young I had my special indoor rocks that were too precious to possibly go back outside and had to be displayed in the house. And then I had a rock garden outside, which still there around all of my mother's flower beds at home. And it's just it's been great that it's worked out because there was truly no backup plan other than geology. So very happy for myself that it worked out the way it did.
Speaker 2:One thing about geologists, they're always in great shape because when they go for a hike, they come back forty, fifty pounds heavier than they went out.
Speaker 4:And I just
Speaker 2:They're packing rocks.
Speaker 4:I just moved offices out at the mine from one building to another building and my new office is up three flights of stairs. And it was the running joke of never help a geologist move because you'll literally be moving boxes of rocks, and that was a 100% exactly the majority of what I moved when I moved offices was all of my rock collection from twelve years, working out there. So
Speaker 3:Well, I have to confess that, my extent of rocks ended in the eighth grade when I stopped I ended the class on earth science. So I'm nowhere in your league, but I still love the fact that mining's a great part of our community. And I wanna kinda turn the page a little bit and just talk about Ray, you talked about the early entry into mining back to grade school, and let's use that as a springboard to just talk about some of the things that Kensington did to begin to develop what we now know today as Kensington Mine. And Frank, you may have been involved in that, so I'm gonna give it all to you just to talk about early days of mining. In this case, how do we get a project going?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I started in 'eighty eight here working on it from the comet side. We did early exploration work and project development, so it's been a long road, and it's been a very long road in time, because just think about it, when you're trying to build a mine these days, it's decades. It's literally decades. You go through several economic cycles watching the economy up and back down and back up. So to actually develop a mind these days, it takes a mindset that, not a play on words, a mindset, that you're gonna do this come hell or high water.
Speaker 2:And really, Dennis, who was the president of CORE at the time, he had that vision. He said, I see a mine here, I just see it, I feel it, I want this to happen. It didn't matter what was going on around him, and we really need to give the man credit that he was fantastic.
Speaker 3:Yeah. I remember going to chamber many times, and mister Wheeler would be there, and he would be casting that vision. And today, that vision is in progress. So that's really cool.
Speaker 4:Well, I just think it's, I mean, to the point, I mean, it took decades to get Kensington into production. And then when it started back in 2010, they only had a ten year mine life. So Kensington was supposed to wrap up and be done in 2020, and we're still out there mining in 2026. We have at least five more years ahead of us on the books right now. So it just speaks to how dynamic and how much evolution there is over that first drill hole that's on the ground that hits something interesting all the way through production and reclamation.
Speaker 4:As you said, it's a it's a decade long cycle, and it changes and evolves so much within that time frame.
Speaker 3:One of the interesting things I do wanna put point out early on is just the economic impact. And I'm using twenty twenty four statistics from our state. And so in 2024, 465,000,000 on exploration and development. That is an astronomical number. And what's really interesting to me is that more than 134,000,000,000 has been invested since 1991 in that exploration phase.
Speaker 3:So Frank, we got the numbers out. What were you gonna say?
Speaker 2:Well, you brought up exploration. I think that's a good one to hit on. Why don't we talk about that for a moment? Is that when people think mining, well, it just means you'll walk in and you start digging a hole in the ground and just selling some rock and you make some mineral. But in fact, we're talking decades of exploration, raising money in the markets, drilling holes, doing all kinds of engineering work and project development.
Speaker 2:So it's an industry really in itself, exploration is. And for every ten, fifteen, 2,100 really exploration sites, maybe you get one mine. So it really is a business unto itself. And I think that's something that there's tremendous potential for here in Southeast, is to go out, look, see what's there, do the categorization of what rocks and mineral deposits are there, and then somebody with a bunch of money can come in and try to develop another mine. Kensington is probably, or not just Kensington, but Koor in general, is always on the look.
Speaker 4:Oh yeah, and I mean the exploration phase, I mean that's how you start a mine, but it never ends. That's why we've been able to add over, you know, we've doubled our mine life from what we initially thought it was. I think our exploration budgets even currently right now in 2026 are upwards of $15,000,000 a year that we spend on exploration. We have well over 10,000 drill holes into that deposit at this point. And even at that rate, that sounds like a lot, but I heard a statistic once and I never forget it.
Speaker 4:We are estimating and putting together our models and trying to turn those drill holes and extrapolate that into the mountain as a whole and figure out exactly where the gold is. We're only sampling about one billionth of that entire deposit, and then you're extrapolating out from that. So 10,000 drill holes might sound like a lot, but you you need that much drilling and that much investment to be able to actually understand where the gold sits and how to get it out of the ground economically.
Speaker 2:Well, the old saying goes, the best place to find a gold mine is next to a gold mine.
Speaker 4:Well, yes. And that is a fortunate thing that we kind of have as a bonus here in Alaska because it's been such a long and rich mining history. A lot of the different veins and deposits that we're mining out at Kensington were already named because they were mined back in the eighteen hundreds, nineteen hundreds. And, you know, they were walked away from for a variety of reasons, economics, or flooding or, you know, just the current technology they had available. At the time they got what they could.
Speaker 4:And then we come in there, modern approach can go, you know, deeper and mine lower grades than they were able to get back in there and mine something that was initially discovered in the 1800s. We've discovered some things for ourselves and gotten to name some stuff, which is fun, but I'd say the vast majority of everything that we're mining out there already had a name. So, I mean, that's a benefit to the state of Alaska and the rich mining history here is, as you say, a really good place to start prospecting and putting some new holes in the ground is where there was already a mine in the past.
Speaker 2:Well, and your extraction techniques have improved as well.
Speaker 4:Oh yeah, for sure. I mean, I think a lot of people still have misconception that we're running around down there with, you know, pickaxes and sticks of TNT, kind of seven dwarf style, and it it couldn't be further from the truth. Modern mining is, you know, there's there's a lot of technology involved. You have pieces of equipment that are, you know, driving around on rubber tires or jumbo drills or bolters until you actually see one of those in person. It's really hard to even describe what they look like, but there's hydraulic hoses all over the place.
Speaker 4:And yeah, there's a lot of technology. I mean, the drillers and the bolters have tablet screens in there like you see in new cars these days that show them exactly where they are and what drill pattern they should be drilling out. And it's really advanced and it's not, you know, I think it's more advanced than people that haven't gotten the opportunity to go look at a mine think it is.
Speaker 3:The First Things First did recently was just comment on, I think it was a a public comment period on your exploration, processes. So I think you got all those permits. But if you could just address real real quickly, I know that some of the environmental considerations that Kensington had to go through or consider in in this exploration phase or at least the new exploration phase.
Speaker 4:Oh, that's not a 100% my area of expertise, but I can do my best. I mean, one of the biggest things that we deal with and keep a very close eye on environmentally is water of all sorts. Our water usage, storm water runoff, the water that infiltrates into the mine before we can discharge that back out into the environment. When our exploration folks are doing surface drilling and they're perched up on the mountain well above camp, we have to know where they're able to pull water from and then how that water gets introduced back into the environment to make sure that there's no contaminants. I know that we actually have a start date that we're allowed to actually have helicopters and drills up on the mountain.
Speaker 4:It's related to when the goats have their kids. So there's a date after which you can be up there because before that, we don't want to disturb the goats kidding season. And so yeah, I mean, it's everything from water to mountain goat breeding times that has taken into consideration.
Speaker 1:Little things I would have never thought about.
Speaker 4:Right, yeah. Yeah, we have to wait for the mountain goats to have their babies before we can get up there with a helicopter and possibly disturb them.
Speaker 2:Was going to jump in here and just say it might be defining what kind of a mine we're looking at here because we have open pit mines down south, but here in Southeast we have two underground mines. What does it mean to be an underground mine?
Speaker 4:Sure, yeah. So I think a lot of people envision open pits when they think of mining. Those are those big, you know, tiered holes in the ground. But both Kensington and Greens Creek were underground. So we're entering through a portal, which is just basically looks like a cave entrance on surface.
Speaker 4:They're about 17 by 18 feet tall. We drive in and out if I'm heading underground myself, we're driving in and out in a pickup truck. So then you drive in and it's basically just a bunch of tunnels under there. There's usually a ramp system, so you can drive up and you can drive down and then everything branches off of that.
Speaker 2:And the weather's always the same.
Speaker 4:It is always the same. And I have to say Kensington, it's always a lovely temperature to work in. I will admit I'm Canadian and one thing I have not fully wrapped my head around even in twelve years is Fahrenheit. It's about 10 degrees Celsius all the time under there, which is actually can be slightly cool in certain places, but it's it's never uncomfortable. I know there's mines that go really deep in places like Arizona and it gets well over a 100 degrees.
Speaker 4:That's Fahrenheit. I know that much. But but 55. 55? Yeah.
Speaker 4:That sounds about right. But yeah. It's a it's a pleasant temperature to work in. And you're right. It it is always the same.
Speaker 4:At certain times of the year, there's more or less water dripping into the mine. So we're coming into the we call it for Chet, the big snow melt time of year. So things are they're starting to be more drips. So you you might get a little damp under there in certain places.
Speaker 3:We've sort of straddled the line line of the beginning phases of a mine exploration, some of the investments it takes to bring a vision, in this case, Mr. Wheeler's vision to fruition. So let's turn that corner and just talk about operations. And we've talked about some of that already, I'd like to concentrate a little bit about an average day in the life of Kensington Mine and the number of folks, professions, if you will, just kind of that whole breadth of what's going on out there. So, Ray, can you enlighten us and our public about an average mining day for Kensington?
Speaker 4:I can kind of split that into sort of two groups because there's those of us like myself that we we day trip in and out. So our days start very early. I wake up at about 4AM because our bus leaves town at 5AM to get out to the mine site by about 06:30. It is a camp out there, so a lot of the workforce does stay out at site. Our different departments all work slightly different schedules.
Speaker 4:Our mine operations group, those are the miners that are actually going underground. They work 7AM to 7PM, twelve hour shifts. I think the mill, they work about 5AM to 5PM. So everybody kind of starts their day in the KDR, the Kensington Dining room at site and gets another really nice hot breakfast every day, which is great. And then heads up the hill and goes to their respective work areas.
Speaker 4:If you're heading underground, you're going to be underground from about 07:30AM to 6PM or the inverse of that if you're working night shift. There's a whole office building full of engineers and geologists and environmental technicians. They work 7AM to 5PM. But the thing about Oman is everybody's day is different. I can't give you an overarching view of what a day in the life looks like because every single person out there has a different day.
Speaker 4:Even as an individual, all of my days look different. Some days can be very office heavy and full of meetings and can look like a very normal corporate kind of nine to five job. And then some days I get to go drive around underground and hit rocks with a rock hammer and look at stuff and get dirty. So I mean, every day is different and every single person stays different.
Speaker 1:Well I guess two tiered question here. I guess how big is your crew, Ray? And then I guess how big is just the crew out there in general?
Speaker 4:I think we have what, a little over 400 total employees. About half of those are at site at a time because again, it's rotational work. Most of our people work two weeks on, two weeks off. My new department, is mine operations and the surface department, I'm looking at probably just a little under 150 total people in that department. I think the mine operations group is up around just under 130 total people.
Speaker 4:And that's the entire minor workforce, all the people that are going underground, as well as all of their superintendents and shifters and the leaders and supervisors of that group.
Speaker 5:I think that Ray made a really great point though, that not every day looks the same. You can't really categorize the day of a miner because there's so many different careers in mining. We have an operation that runs twenty four hours a day, seven days a week, three sixty five days a year. And we've got about 400 full time employees plus a bunch of contractors that are out there all the time. And we've got all the jobs.
Speaker 5:We are located in a remote area, we're off city utilities. So we have to treat our own water, treat our own wastewater, create our own power, make our own roads, maintain our own roads. We've got construction crews, operators, miners, environmental scientists, geologists, medics. There's really just a huge array of job opportunities out there and so many different things that you can do.
Speaker 1:I view this as like its own little city out there. That's how I always hear this.
Speaker 5:Exactly.
Speaker 1:I would imagine that would bring job opportunities with it in almost every facet. There has to be. Just in your crew alone Ray or?
Speaker 4:Oh yeah, I mean we have everyone from you know haul truck drivers and operators. We have one guy, his entire job is managing and inventorying and checking out our explosives. So that's one person's entire job is just dealing with the explosives as they're shipped onto site and then shipped underground. And we have to keep very close track. We're regulated in that sense that we have to track the use of every single bit of explosive that comes on-site and that what's checked in gets used.
Speaker 4:So, I mean, that's one person's entire job is just managing the explosives. So yeah, there's all sorts of jobs and there's almost always postings up in some way, shape or form. Think knock on wood, this minute, I think I'm pretty full up on at least the mining crews. I think we just sent out an offer letter for a surface operator the other day. But I mean there's there's always some natural turnover.
Speaker 4:So there's there are always postings across the entire mine site.
Speaker 5:We are hiring. There's jobs posted right now. Rochelle, We're always were hiring.
Speaker 2:Rochelle, you were talking earlier about training programs and how CORE is sponsoring or aiding in the local university here and the training programs for high schoolers and for college kids. Can you focus on that a little bit?
Speaker 5:Yeah, one thing that we do feel really passionate about is just making sure that we're training our workforce, but we're also helping to train future workforces, right? We need to think about the next generation and make sure that they have the skills needed to be able to work in these great jobs that we have here in Juneau and here in Alaska. So we have some really amazing partnerships with the University of Alaska system, mostly with the University of Alaska Southeast here in town. Their Career and Technical Education Center is really an incredible facility. One that's a bit new is our mining pathways program.
Speaker 5:It's a collaboration with University of Alaska Southeast, the Juneau School District, and then us and Hecla Greens Creek Mine. This is a program for high school students. They can earn both high school and college credits while they attend. Industry is covering the cost of tuition, so it's at no cost to the student. And we have a couple different pathways that they can choose from that take you into careers that don't necessarily need post secondary education or could if they decide they wanna continue on.
Speaker 5:So there's a diesel pathway, environmental science and then also geology. And we started this in 2024 and so far we've had classes filled to capacity with wait lists. So we are thrilled to see that there really is an appetite for career education here in Juneau. It's been a great partnership and we're always bringing in guest speakers to make sure that these kids get to learn from industry professionals and learn about what's happening out at the mine today and what skills that we need. So that's one of our newer ones.
Speaker 5:We also have a mobile mechanic trainee program, which another great program through University of Alaska Southeast right here in Juneau. We were having a really hard time filling mechanic roles. They're in high demand right now and so we figured that maybe we would start training some ourselves. So what we do is every once in a while, we don't post it all the time because they need time to go through the program and get trained up. But we will post on our website an opportunity to apply for this program.
Speaker 5:We will pay their tuition while they're in school. We will give them a monthly stipend for living expenses. When school is not in session, they get to train hands on training with one of our partners here in town, Tyler Rental. And when they get out of school, they have a full time job out at the mine and no student loan debt. So that's a great opportunity.
Speaker 5:Right now it is open to second year power technology students or graduates from the mining pathways program. So another really great one to keep your eyes on our website for.
Speaker 2:Well, that's awesome to think of coming out of school, no debt and looking at a 6 figure income. Yeah. That's not everywhere.
Speaker 5:It's not everywhere. No, it certainly wasn't my experience after school. No. This would have been wonderful.
Speaker 3:Well, thanks for mentioning the 6 figure income because we have it here on one of our state 2024 data banks. Average industry wage for mining is a 124,000 per year. So that's the average across the state of Alaska. That is a very livable wage, even for Juneau, which has in many of our minds, high cost of living.
Speaker 2:And Don, that's the average. So what are we looking at for starting salaries? Probably 80,000?
Speaker 5:So I don't work in HR, so I'm not the expert on this. But the last time I had talked to them about entry level, I think if you're coming in completely entry level, no mining experience, typically you're looking at around 80 or 90,000 starting.
Speaker 2:That's phenomenal. That's the top tier. I mean, oil companies can't even compete with that.
Speaker 5:It is a wonderful wage and we also have great benefits. I really enjoy working for CORE. Got great retirement, great health, great benefits, innovative benefits. We've got parental leave and some nice bonuses like that.
Speaker 2:And you could live right here in Juneau.
Speaker 5:And you can live here in Juneau.
Speaker 3:I like that. We need more minors in Juneau. I'm convinced of that. Agreed. One of the things that I do want to point out too, just find this an interesting statistic, and this comes from the CBJ's most recent annual comprehensive financial report, but the mining industry provides 6% of Juno's jobs, but this is even more astounding, but 10% of its total wages.
Speaker 3:So these are valuable citizens and getting them more to stay or getting more of them to stay really should be a goal of Juno. So city assembly, are you listening to that one? We hope so.
Speaker 2:You know, when it and and Don, that's a good point. It makes me think about careers And people think, well, is this a renewable resource? And it is in that in a regional basis, you can sustain the industry by doing exploration and keeping the opportunities coming. And there's plenty of opportunity to do exploration here. So this is something where a guy could stay right, or guy or gal, pardon me, I'm kind of an old fart, and could look to spend an entire career here, whereas generally in the mining industry, for me, I covered half the Western States, that you just go from opportunity to opportunity, but here there's a lot of regional opportunity.
Speaker 3:Well, there is opportunity, and I would be remiss if I didn't mention that our mines, our two mines here from the Juneau area, our largest private, both I think employers and taxpayers. When you consider all the the assets that they have and the fact that they're paying taxes on that property, that's a huge infusion into city coffers. So thank you mining industry for helping our community afford public safety schools and all the things that we rely on. So thanks. I gotta put that one in there, Frank.
Speaker 1:Well, I feel like there's more community impacts than just that. They are the largest local property taxpayers in Juneau, but I feel like there's so much more to it than that too.
Speaker 2:Well, mining industry, yeah, contributes to the economy and the community, but it is the community. That's the thing. This is the population. These are the folks we're talking right now to the people that go out there every day and work the mines. We are Juno.
Speaker 3:To your point, Dan, charitable contributions, you just have to know only because if you're a casual observer in our community and you just kinda watch the news, you know that our minds are contributing to our kids or our our, you know, kind of our community events. For example, I've got grandchildren that are in the dance school. And guess who supports the dancing? I hear it every time I go to a show. Our mining industry.
Speaker 3:And that's a great thing for Juno to be recipients of and to be a part of.
Speaker 5:Yeah. That is, I think one of the best parts of my job is being able to look at how we can best support the community of Juneau and how we can really make a lasting difference. So we're, we support a lot of different initiatives and programs and events here, but we're also looking for ways that we can really leave a legacy behind if we can. So in addition to writing checks for smaller donations, you know, we've also tried to set up some really lasting things. We do have an environmental science endowment through the University of Alaska Southeast.
Speaker 5:That was started back in 1991 and we've been growing it ever since. That's been providing scholarships for environmental science, marine biology and environmental resource for many years now. And more recently we started a new endowment fund through the Juneau Community Foundation to benefit the Juneau School District and that's to support extracurricular activities for the students. We've been writing a lot of checks every year for many, many, many years and we thought there's gotta be a better way to do this and something that can be a little bit more sustainable. So setting up this endowment fund means that we'll be able to continue supporting Juno's students and their activities even well beyond the life of mine.
Speaker 5:So making sure that we're impacting Juno today, but we also are gonna continue to support Juno for many, many years to come.
Speaker 2:And right now you're supporting Juno in that you have direct jobs, but you also have indirect jobs and support industry jobs. Could you maybe just talk a little bit off top of your head here about kind of goods and services that you buy through Juno?
Speaker 5:Yeah, I mean, we work with a ton of Alaskan vendors. I don't have Juneau specific numbers in front of me, but I know that last year we spent over $72,000,000 with Alaska based vendors. So that is a lot of money that gets infused right back into our state, right back into our community. And we do work with a ton, a ton of different people here in Juneau. I mean, Gold Belt's been a longtime partner of ours providing all of our transportation and security services.
Speaker 5:Tyler Rental is a huge partner, they help us out with a lot of equipment. And of course our maintenance trainee program, we get our mobile mechanics trained up through them. We've got a lot of different contractors that are helping us with some of our permit expansions right now. We are expanding our tailings treatment facility and that takes quite a bit of construction work. So we've got Ag Pro, which is a Juno based vendor that's out there doing work.
Speaker 5:Alaska Aggregate Products, AAP, yeah, they're Anchorage based but another Alaska vendor. And Ray, you probably know more specific ones that are out.
Speaker 4:Gosh, I think you covered all the ones I can think of. But I mean, even just as simple as I was signing invoices the other day for Perry's Plumbing because we needed to get a bunch of valves and fittings out there because we accidentally hit a water line and we were doing snow removal. So I mean any sort of those, know, anything you can get at a hardware store, basically, we're getting those from local Juno companies, pumps, fittings, pipes, all that stuff's coming from town up to the mine.
Speaker 5:Yeah, AML, huge partner of ours. We don't have any roads, so everything comes by air, by sea and mostly by sea. So AML has been a huge partner of ours making us able to be able to continue uninterrupted operation and provide access.
Speaker 3:So Rochelle, Ray, either one. If I were a new business and I wanted to introduce myself and have a chance at some of this business, how would I do that?
Speaker 4:First thing that crosses my mind is we have a really great local chapter of the Alaska Mining Association. They've been meeting we meet every Friday kind of in the non summer months. We know everyone's busy during the summer. So every Friday morning at 8AM at TK McGuire's and we have presentations from both of the mines and also other the city of Juno's presented, Goldbelts presented on just all sorts of stuff that could interest the mining community or be mining adjacent or directly about mining. So I mean, think if you were interested in meeting some connections, that's a really great place to start is to come out for the AMA breakfast at 8AM.
Speaker 4:Gold Rush Days is coming up. I'll queue that one up. There's gonna be a lot of people for mining out there on Douglas in June.
Speaker 5:Yeah, no, that's a great point. The AMA meetings are a really good networking opportunity and yeah, Gold Rush Days, we're well underway for planning. It's coming up June this year. We're looking for sponsors and vendors. So if new businesses are looking to get in front of people and meet a lot of people in the mining industry, that could be a great chance to do so.
Speaker 5:So junogoldrushdays.com.
Speaker 2:The one thing I did want to leave everybody with is the old saying that everything in the economy, if it can't be grown, it must be mined.
Speaker 1:I like that Frank. I like that a lot. No, this was a really, really enriching discussion about Juno mining and everything that it does. And Rochelle, just want to point it out to throw it back to you real quick one more time. If there's any youth out there or someone who's maybe thinking about switching careers or just wanting to start their career, how can they look up information to get more involved at Kensington?
Speaker 5:Yeah, you can visit our website at core.com/kensington. That's coeur.com/kensington. We're always posting jobs. We've got lots of positions available. There are so many career options in mining.
Speaker 5:It's not just the operators. I mean, takes everybody to run a mine. Like you said, it's a small town out there. So we have all the positions available. You can also email us at kensingtoncore dot com if you have any questions and we'd be happy to put you in touch with people to talk with and talk careers.
Speaker 1:Rochelle Lindley, she's your external affairs manager at Kensington. Great information. Take advantage of some of their career paths. I was blown away at hearing some of that today. And then also want to thank Ray Keim for coming in.
Speaker 1:She is your mine manager at Kensington. Ray, thank you so much for all the information as well. Of course. And of course for the president of the Women in Mining Alaska chapter, if people want get involved with that, if there's any women out there that want to get involved with that, how do they do that?
Speaker 4:Yeah, our website is through the WIM Nationals. So I think if you looked up, I can't remember what the exact website address is, but if you look up Women and Mining National, you can get to our page through there. Are on LinkedIn. That's the main place where we post, so feel free to follow there. We do host a lot of mixer events.
Speaker 4:We also get involved with a lot of the community events. We'll be at Goldrush days. We have been involved with the same mining pathways class. We've hosted some meet and greets there at the school so students can come and talk to people again that are actually out there working at the mines to get their questions answered. LinkedIn is probably the best place to stay appraised of upcoming events that we'll be hosting locally.
Speaker 1:Thanks, Ray. And of course, Don, last but not least, Executive Director of First Things First. If everybody likes what they're hearing here and wanna get involved with First Things First, Don, how can they do that?
Speaker 3:The very easiest way is just to get ahold of us on our website, and that is f t f a k foundation spelled out dot org. You can message us through the website and we'd love for folks to join us via the website.
Speaker 1:And of course, if you wanna hear any more episodes of the First Things First podcast, you can do that over at kinyradio.com or the First Things First website.