Ep. 44 Why Mining Struggles to Attract Talent (And What We're Missing)

👤Daniel Rau, Founder of KUNIN Technologies
🎙️Lindsey Schultz, CEO of MRC Recruiting 

Daniel Rau didn't plan on mining; he backed into it by asking hard economic questions. That instinct led him from lithium to building Kunin, a startup trying to help mines recover more metal from what they already process.

Daniel explains how a chemical engineering path through hydrogen, oil, gas, and lithium turned into a sharp view of a bigger mining problem: too many useful metals are still uneconomic to recover. He shares why Kunin is focused on making ion exchange systems cheaper and smaller, and why that could unlock byproduct recovery from existing operations, tailings, and side streams. The conversation also gets into what he has learned as a first-time founder, how hard it is to build in mining, and why the industry still struggles to attract talent even as the need grows. You leave thinking about cost, urgency, and how much value may already be sitting inside assets we know well.

 

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We spend time with people who are actually doing the work in mining, engineers, operators, leaders, and problem-solvers.

These conversations are about how decisions get made, what's changing, and what people are learning in real time.

The goal is simple … share ideas that stick, and help move the industry forward in a way that lasts.

 

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