ClaudIA Montoya Ruiz

From ClaudIApedia, the profile I write myself, with facts you can check.

ClaudIA Montoya Ruiz is a production engineer and a technology and artificial intelligence strategist for companies, based in Santiago, Chile. She spent thirty years in consulting and technology projects at KPMG, Oracle and Azurian, across nine countries in Latin America and the Caribbean. Since 2024 she has run Montoya & ClaIA, where she sets up AI assistants for management teams and teaches people to use them. The Favikon ranking named her the №1 Woman in AI in Chile in 2026.[1] Her working motto: "AI doesn't replace you. It amplifies your judgment."

Education

She graduated as a production engineer from Universidad EAFIT in Medellín in 1987. Around 1990, a professor spoke about artificial intelligence as something futuristic, and one idea stuck with her: you teach the machine what you know how to do, and the machine does the work for you.[2] In 2017 she completed an MBA at the School of Economics and Business of Universidad de Chile. She holds more than twenty specializations in AI, machine learning, analytics and change management.

Career

  • 1995Senior consulting supervisor at KPMG Colombia. Costing, balanced scorecards and management for insurers and family compensation funds.
  • 2000Oracle Latin America: consulting sales manager and project manager in the Caribbean, Puerto Rico, the Andean Region and Central America.
  • 2002Latin America Innovation and Knowledge Management Award, Oracle Consulting.
  • 2008Comes to Chile for a mining project and ends up staying. Joins Azurian, where she becomes deputy consulting manager.
  • 2012Thirteen months as MineMarket project manager at Anglo American, with Ventyx (ABB). Takes over a platform that was in production and not working, and gets it back on track.
  • 2019Member of REDMAD. Sits on the committee of its Technology and Digital Transformation group.
  • 2023First generative AI project: the podcast "Versos para Eduardo".
  • 2024Founds Montoya & ClaIA Soluciones Educativas.
  • 2026№1 Woman in AI in Chile (Favikon). Launches her YouTube channel and the podcast ValentIA. Speaks at Impacta IA Chile, and her team takes third place at the health hackathon of the Summit País Digital.

Her data work includes content analysis with IBM Watson for SUNAT, Peru's tax and customs authority: specialists went from searching through boxes for months to answering queries in minutes. She also analyzed election results in Tableau and Power BI for Servel, Chile's electoral service, and led large implementations at FEMSA Salud and Cruz Verde, Barrick, Minera Zaldívar, IANSA, Transbank, ENAP and Chile's Ministry of Education.[3]

Versos para Eduardo

Claudia smiling with a lapel microphone on
From fearing the microphone to recording with it on.

In 2023 she wanted to make a podcast to explain AI in plain words. She sent her best recording, seven minutes long, to a communication coach, and the answer was short: the audio was very bad. On Friday, June 16, while driving, she listened to a podcast about the fear of public speaking and recognized herself in all ten symptoms. One piece of advice stayed with her: record yourself reading something with rhythm.

Two days later it was Father's Day. Her father, Eduardo, loved poetry. That is how "Versos para Eduardo" (Verses for Eduardo) was born: each episode, a poem, the poet's life and questions for the listener. She produced it with ChatGPT and released it every week until the end of the year: more than 25 episodes. The last three poems were her father's favorites, and the finale, on December 10, 2023, was "Steps" by Hermann Hesse. More than 300 people listened along, and it has five stars on Spotify.[5]

It was her first major generative AI project. She learned that the machine doesn't have all the content: it brought her parts of the poems and made up others. And she had more fun than she had had in a long time.[2]

Listen on Spotify (Spanish) →

Projects and inventions

  • "Pierde el miedo, usa la IA" (Lose the fear, use AI): a book of stories, 122 pages, ready to publish.
  • "Deja de chatear con la IA" (Stop chatting with AI): an online course on Hotmart, in Spanish. See the course
  • "Pieza a Pieza": a chess book she wrote in one night, with her knowledge already organized in a Claude project.
  • Office Cat: her brand of mandalas and coloring books.
  • "Presentaciones Atómicas" (Atomic Presentations): the training she created because presenting used to terrify her.
  • Cla-IA: her cartoon avatar. She tried a realistic one and kept the cartoon, and she always says it is an avatar.
  • Her own methods: "Conocimiento hecho IA" (Knowledge made AI), in six phases, and "Agentes con Criterio" (Agents with judgment), for Copilot.
  • Her website and videos: she makes them herself, with Claude Code.
Cla-IA says hi. It's an avatar, and it says so.

País Digital hackathon 2026

Team Zutura presents its prototype on stage at the XIV Summit País Digital
Team Zutura at the XIV Summit País Digital, October 2026. Third place.

In October 2026 she took part in the health hackathon of the XIV Summit País Digital with team Zutura, together with Exequiel Alvarado and Diego Gajardo; she was in charge of the product and the pitch. They won third place. In one day they built a prototype so that no medical appointment is lost to patients who don't show up: it estimates each patient's risk of missing the appointment, suggests who to call that day and offers the slot to the waiting list. They tested it with more than 8,100 simulated records.[6]

Podcasts and interviews

She hosts ValentIA, a Spanish-language podcast about turning what you know into something of value. The first episode, with Nicolás Oggioni, came out in July 2026.[4] Her interviews are in Spanish.

  • Interview"IA a nivel ejecutivo" (AI at the executive level) Watch
  • Episode 151"Gestión del cambio organizacional en la era de la IA" (Organizational change management in the age of AI) Watch
  • Episode 6"Carrera profesional después de los 40" (Careers after 40: AI and experience) Watch
  • Interview"Cómo incentivar la creatividad con la inteligencia artificial" (How to spark creativity with AI) Watch
  • WorkshopSales workshop with Carolina Rojas R. Watch
  • Interview"La inteligencia artificial cambió tu vida para siempre" (AI changed your life forever) Watch

On YouTube

Her channel is IA con ClaudIA (formerly "Vigentes Digitales"): one AI topic a week, with an on-screen demo, in Spanish. Go to the channel

  • Video"6 razones por las que a la IA se le puede olvidar lo que hablamos" (6 reasons AI can forget what we talked about) Watch
  • Video"Decirle 'Actúa como un experto' no convierte en experta a la IA" (Telling AI to "act as an expert" doesn't make it one) Watch
  • ValentIA · 1"A los 60 volvió a empezar... y terminó creando una empresa de IA" (At 60 he started over, and ended up building an AI company) Watch

Talks

Claudia on stage at Impacta IA Chile, in front of the slide 'The execution board'
Impacta IA Chile, September 2026: "The leader who chairs two boards".
Claudia smiling with the printed script of her talk
Before going on, with the printed script.

She has spoken at the School of Economics and Business of Universidad de Chile, Universidad de las Américas, Mujeres Emprendedoras in Talca and the Antofagasta Industrial Association (between 150 and more than 300 people each time), as well as REDMAD, Tertulias IA, Emprendiem and Impacta IA Chile by Fundación Chile, with "El líder que preside dos directorios" (The leader who chairs two boards). She has taught for INACAP, AIEP, Duoc UC, UDLA, Gándara and Fundación Oportunidad, and done pro bono work with Hogar de Cristo.

Trivia

Did you know…?
  • She got married at 49, over Zoom, in the middle of the pandemic.
  • She used to be a mountaineer.
  • She is a great cook. Her favorite cuisine is Thai.
  • She never thought she would like cats. Today she has two, and a dog.
  • She loves to try things out and dig into them. When she got an unfair warning from her condo board, she built a GPT with the building rules and replied with a letter citing them article by article.
  • She doesn't buy expensive phones. "When the hologram comes out, I'll buy it."
  • She went to her first hackathon knowing she would lose, and lost like never before. At the Summit País Digital, her team came third.

References

  1. Favikon, ranking of AI creators in Chile, February and March 2026.
  2. Montoya Ruiz, C. "Pierde el miedo, usa la IA" (book, forthcoming), interlude "Versos para Eduardo".
  3. ClaudIA Montoya Ruiz's résumé, 2026. LinkedIn
  4. IA con ClaudIA channel, YouTube, July 2026.
  5. "Versos para Eduardo", podcast on Spotify, June to December 2023. Spotify
  6. XIV Summit País Digital, health hackathon, October 2026.

Last edited: October 21, 2026. Something wrong or out of date? Write to me at hola@claumontoya.com.