While they beckon from different disciplines, they are each looking to enhance not only their work but also their feminine roles. They are women who have “made their way by walking their own path,” as the Spanish poet Antonio Machado would have said. Here are five names that should be on your radar in 2022.
1.María Ignacia Lewin (45)
Teaching how to fish and not giving the fish away
This Cumbres School teacher is not one to sit idly by. In the midst of the pandemic, she demonstrated her vocation as a teacher, and with her simple desire to help she ended up creating a virtuous educational cycle. “Jacinta de Andraca and Agustina Cox, former students of the RC network of schools, contacted me because they had the idea of offering online classes to vulnerable children who were not being taught,” Lewin recalls. In April 2020, they started having daily evening meetings to develop the working model, enroll future tutors and build up the initial core network. “We even rehearsed with my youngest daughter what an online tutorial was supposed to be like! We then contacted the Mano Amiga schools, and within a week we had more than 30 students. Within a month we had more than 100 students, and today we have more than 700 children enrolled, from the north to the south of Chile, each with their own tutors. In other words, more than 1,400 people are now involved with the Conectado Aprendo project. It has been a tremendous team effort that has produced unexpected results!” she explains.
María Ignacia and her team have set the goal of reaching 2,500 schoolchildren in 2022, especially those from municipal schools in the regions. They will focus on tutoring Mathematics and Language, since — according to their lived experience — these are the two subject areas that are weakest in vulnerable communities. Recognized for her work with the Mujer Impacta 2021 Prize and included in El Mercurio’s list of Women Leaders, she is one of the women to watch in 2022.
2. Nadac Reales (33)
Give up? Never!
In Nadac Reales’ life, the word “no” does not exist. This biotechnologist from Antofagasta, the creator of microorganisms that can bidodegrade mining waste, specifically metallic structures, has fashioned her own destiny. Her father, who always worked in the mining area as a contractor, shaped her life. By the time she was 10 years, he was 60 and his health had begun to decline. To help support her family, Nadac started working in a supermarket. When she took the university entrance exam, she did poorly. “It was my first failure,” she muses. But being aware that she needed an education in order to get ahead in life, she attended a test prep school and “demonstrating her deep interest in becoming a professional, she managed to get a scholarship. While preparing to retake the entry exam, a professor told her about a career in biotechnology, and she decided that’s what she would study.” In 2007 she enrolled at the Universidad de Antofagasta and, thanks to her good grades, won a scholarship for the five years of her degree, she explained in an interview with DF, a local newspaper. And none of it was in vain. Today Nadac Reales has her own biotechnology company, Rudanac Biotec. “I realized that a lot of efforts were focused on plastic, tires and bags, but I looked for information, and there was nothing relating to metal waste,” she related in an interview with Antofagasta’s Timeline.
Her breakthrough discovery is related to the solution of Leptoespirillum bacteria, which are organisms that live in extreme conditions and derive their energy from the oxidation of insoluble inorganic elements or ferrous iron. She discovered these microorganisms in the vicinity of the Tatio Geysers, 350 km from Antofagasta and 4,200 meters above sea level. After many experiments, she found that if she deprived the bacteria of food they could decompose a nail in three days. Nadac Reales continues to reap success: in March 2021 she won the “25 Women in Science Latin America 2nd Edition” prize, sponsored by 3M, whose objective is to contribute to reducing the gender gap and increasing access to STEM disciplines: in other words, to empower women to choose scientific careers.
3. Magdalena Pereira (45)
Andean Crusade
For more than twenty years, historian Magdalena Pereira has been working in absolute silence. That was until recently when in 2021 she was recognized by the Mujer Impacta Foundation. It all began when she and her husband left Santiago in 2003 to set up their newlywed home in Arica with the purpose of starting the Altiplano Foundation, whose mission would be the restoration of the churches of northern Chile, which had fallen into extreme disrepair. “For the first renovation, in Poconchile, we bought the materials from Homecenter, with the money from our wedding gifts,” Magdalena told the La Segunda newspaper.
It had been love at first sight between Magdalena and heritage restoration projects a few years earlier. “Father Amador is a priest who visited all the villages of the Altiplano. One winter vacation, he invited a group of us to go horseback riding through the area. But it was a trick! (she says laughingly), because he took us to fix up the church in Livilcar for 10 days. While removing the lime from the walls with spatulas, we found that beautiful paintings from the 18th century were appearing below. That’s where my first reflections came from: “What were we, a bunch of 19-year-olds with no specialized knowledge, doing in charge of this?” I realized then that there were no safeguards for our heritage sites,” she recalls. Since then, the Altiplano Foundation, a non-profit organization that responds to the need for heritage conservation in Andean and rural communities as an alternative for sustainable development, has restored more than 20 churches in the communities of Arica and Parinacota. They are supported in their efforts by the Chilean government, private donors, and the Inter-American Development Bank (IADB). In addition, the foundation has established itself as a benchmark in the Americas, promoting heritage conservation as a worthy path. Magdalena Pereira is currently director of the Center for Heritage Studies at the Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez.
4. Ninoska Medel (29)
Brave and talented
It all began when Ninoska Medel was asked to audition at her school in Pudahuel to be part of the Foundation for Youth and Children’s Orchestras of Chile (FOJI), as part of a program backed by the municipality. She was 11 years old and for the first time in her life had access to a violin. “I remember the first rehearsal, being amazed and going home to tell my mom, ‘You have to hear how a lot of violins sound, and the cellos!’” I told her. And we played with open strings, but for me it was wonderful to bring together so much sound, and it really made an impression. That was my introduction to classical music. And maybe a Mozart Effect CD bought for my younger sister, but it seems to have had an effect on me, because I liked it so much,” she recounted in an interview with Radio Beethoven. Over time, Ninoska became interested in training as an orchestra conductor after realizing that there were almost no female conductors in Chile, and very few in the world. “I was very disturbed by the situation and started to find out what you have to do to become a conductor. And, of course, I was told that it is a very complex career, that it was an intellectual, artistic, social challenge, why not just say it, and so difficult and so unattainable, so out of reach for normal people, that I said I was going to do it. That’s where it all began,” Medel explains. And her perseverance paid off. She began to take classes with female and male conductors whom she would follow as they moved around the world. Soon after, she was already the assistant conductor of the University of Chile’s Orchestra of the Faculty of Arts and began to conduct the Aysén Youth Symphony Orchestra. She also founded the Women’s Orchestra of Chile in 2018, and in 2020, the Chilean Women Conductors’ Collective. “I live in San Ramón, and in other words, I became part of this privileged struggle of privileged women who have had the privilege of learning to read music, play an instrument, stand on a podium to conduct a professional orchestra in a theater; academic music in short. My neighbors are fighting to keep their children from slipping into drugs,” she says. Undoubtedly, one of Ninoska Medel’s great milestones was when in 2021 she conducted the Antofagasta Symphony Orchestra (OSA), in a concert that played the repertoire of composers such as Valle, Mozart and Smyth. In addition, a few months ago she received the Mujeres Bacanas (Far-out Women) prize, which is given to Chilean women who are setting new boundaries.
5. Christiane Endler
The Best in the World
Christiane Endler continues to reap the rewards of her career. Last January 17, at the FIFA The Best Awards gala, the Chilean Olympique Lyon goalkeeper won the trophy for best goalkeeper in the world. Her 2020/21 season was hailed as exceptional. “It’s strange. It still hasn’t fully dawned on me. It is a feeling of great happiness, of great pride. To be able to represent South American women, Latin women, and Chile well. To see that a Chilean is at the top makes me very proud, and I still can’t fathom being named the best in the world at what I am doing,” she explained to the RedGol portal. Thanks to Endler, women’s soccer has been gaining ground in Chile. An adventure that began in such a naive way for the most outstanding goalkeeper in the world and one has brought visibility to a group of women who love this sport. “I never had a role model, nor did I know that there was this more highly developed level of women’s soccer, that you could make a living doing this and that it was professional sport. At the beginning it was just about playing because I liked it, and it was what I most wanted to do,” she told Radio Pauta in an interview. In February, Christiane Endler suffered an injury that resulted in a torn medial meniscus in her right knee. She had surgery and should be back on the field by the end of April, because this woman doesn’t give up and does have clear goals for 2022: she wants to win the Women’s Champions League with Lyon and the Copa America Femenina with La Roja (Chilean Women National Soccer Team). How about that!
