- I'd like to introduce the panelists who have joined us to share their perspectives.

Candy Frye is a business development executive at L.R.

Costanzo Construction in Scranton.

Dr. Ellyn Lester is the assistant dean of Construction and Architecture at Pennsylvania College of Technology in Williamsport.

And Dr. Kellyn Williams is the associate vice president of Special Programs at Johnson College.

If you have questions, please ask at Keystone@WVIA.org.

Thank you for joining us tonight.

Looking forward to learning from each of you about your experiences, about your experiences in industry and what you see as opportunities for women ahead in the skilled trades.

So, again, thanks, Candy.

I'd like to start off with you.

We spoke a little bit about motivation and seeing oneself in a career.

Can you talk about what led you to a career in construction?

And that wasn't always the start.

How did you get to where you are now?

- Sure.

So actually my love for the trades started off in my middle school shop class.

I was very interested in, you know, wood shop in particular, and I guess growing up along my dad's side who was not in construction, but very hands on himself, you know, I just learned to love doing things with my hands.

And, you know, I was very good at it.

I was...

I got it easily.

I would help my fellow students cut out things and, you know, explain different concepts to them as well.

So, that's really where it started for me.

- And what was next?

What became a career opportunity building on that interest?

- Yep.

So then after that, around 11th grade, there was a woman from Johnson College that came in to speak to us about future careers in the trades.

And, you know, it got me thinking.

And I always kind of marched to the beat of my own drum anyway.

And I thought, "You know what?

I'm gonna try that.

I'm gonna take that and I'm going to run with it and see what I can do with it."

And I enrolled in Johnson College and went into building construction, and that's where it all started for me.

So... - So as going into building, or from education in building construction, your career has been pretty diverse from there.

Tell us about what you do now and what do you draw still from that experience and that love of the hands-on work?

- Sure, absolutely.

So, while at Johnson, of course, it was very hands-on.

When I went to school, there were like 37 males that I walked in into, and we started side by side immediately from day one.

It was, you know, never an issue.

You know, we accepted each other and we supported each other, and it was really great.

So when I left Johnson, my first job was actually in the fields, or in the trade, rather.

I started with a general contractor and I did roof stack siding, hands on, all of that.

And then, you know, and it really didn't...

I didn't do that very long until my next opportunity came knocking on my door, if you will.

And I went to Home Depot and I started off in the lumber department there.

And then somebody saw something in me that I didn't myself, I guess, and they're like, "You're really good with sales.

Would you like to come to the sales desk?"

And so I went to the service desk and I did that and really found that I really enjoyed people and working with people.

And then I moved on to, I always call them opportunities of growth.

Because every time I moved on, it was to grow, not because I didn't like something or I didn't enjoy what I was doing at the time.

So my next step from there was a door and window company, and I learned how doors and windows were made in the shop, and then I went on to selling them for this company.

And then from there, I went to actually a sheet metal fabricating company.

Again, a job of growth where I took all that previous experience, the measuring, the sales type of environment and worked there.

And then I went into work for a general contractor where I did business development.

I would look for opportunities for us, and I would just, you know, build relationships, nurture relationships.

And here I am today doing the same.

- Interesting diversity in the types of things that you've been able to experience in your career.

Ellyn, I'd like to bring you into the conversation.

- Sure.

- Your career has also been diverse.

- I guess.

- And there's some similarity in like a young experience that set you on that trajectory.

Can you tell a little bit about that too?

- Yes.

So when I was, like, 17, I would never have thought that I would end up in higher ed or building construction and architecture.

My dad was in construction, my mom was a teacher, and that just didn't seem like either path was legitimate for me.

But when my husband decided to get his master's in architecture, I actually had a conversation with one of the faculty that really just, he outright asked me, "Would you like to be in architecture?"

And it never occurred to me.

So that really made it sort of stuck in the back of my head and made a huge difference to what I thought about in the future.

- So, interest in construction and then the design and, like, the vision aspect of architecture.

How do those connect for you in what your career path has been, and then what you're involved in now?

- Yeah.

So like you said, I think opportunities are really the key.

And there are so many different opportunities no matter what path you choose.

And where you're headed, you can sort of pivot along the way for those opportunities of growth.

So I was in architecture and I had an opportunity, I worked for a lot of firms when I was young and you're kind of in your specific niche.

And then I was involved in a lot of nonprofit opportunities and I wanted to become more of a leader.

And when you're involved with a nonprofit, because it's all volunteers, you get to be a leader much faster.

And that really sets the impression.

So someone offered me a job sort of adjacent to architecture in Design-Build Institute of America.

So then I worked for a nonprofit.

And then when the Great Recession happened in 2008, that prompted us to move to California for my husband's job.

And that's how I got into higher ed.

So my career's not really been about buildings per se and designing buildings.

It's always been more about people and working with people and the marketing aspect or the nonprofit aspect or higher ed.

- Dr. Williams, I see some recognition there.

In education, you have the opportunity to influence lives in a really powerful way.

Can you talk about your experience going into higher ed?

- Sure, no pun intended, but I loved what Dr. Lester said about building people, building them up, getting them to understand their skill sets and then putting them in their trajectory for their career.

- What does that look like in your role?

So, a role of leadership.

- [Dr. Williams] Sure.

- What kind of programs do you have the most opportunity to engage in and how do those build the students?

- Sure.

So the different areas that I kind of oversee is community engagement.

So we try to get the younger population before they get to high school to experience the different occupations that we offer at Johnson College.

So we have afterschool STEM programming.

We do a lot of STEM competitions.

We hold a lot of different summer camps and interactive activities for the middle school population, so that these students, male and female, get to lay the ground and the foundation of, "This is the skills I do have, this is the skills I wanna improve on, and this is the direction I wanna go on with my education and my career."

So when they get to the high school status, they can pick the path that they want to, to hopefully end up at a Penn College or a Johnson College to continue their education.

- So not even just the current students, but thinking back to Candy's experience of being in a middle school shop class.

Those are some of the, well, tangential to those experiences or those ages.

- Yeah, I mean, everybody's kind of heard those statistics that around middle schools when women or girls lose their confidence, and that's a key area to keep them in the STEM fields.

Same with males.

A lot of students say to us that they don't like math, but they don't realize they do math when they're in the construction in the trade fields.

So, really kind of not masking it, but just showing it in a different light so that they understand that they have the skillset.

They just need to continue to pursue it and grow on it so that they can achieve the career that they want.

- How do you help to convey that there are opportunities in the skilled trades to a young woman, to a girl at that age of school?

- Sure.

So, most recently, we just had our Girls on Fire event at campus, which had 120 middle school girls to actually do the occupations on campus.

So, in carpentry, they made tealight candle holders.

In HVAC, they were working with HVAC systems.

They also got to do circuitry.

They learned how to do the circuitry for a outlet.

So we put them right in that position so they can see that they do have the skills.

And a lot of them came back now understanding the backside of the technical piece so that they're like, "Oh, I can do this and this is viable."

A lot of them walked out saying, "I'm gonna be an electrician," "I'm gonna be a carpenter," "I'm going to be..." They get to see outside the normal educational realm of jobs, which is, they always see teachers, they see athletic trainers, 'cause that's what's at your school.

A principal, superintendent, a doctor, a lawyer.

These programs give them an option to see occupations outside of that traditional learning.

And these are the HVAC technicians, the plumbers, the carpenters that have a lot of in-demand jobs and a lot of need.

- Let's talk about that demand, that need.

Ellyn, can you speak to that about awareness of what are trends in the workforce?

Recent and projections into the future.

- Oh, we desperately need more people in the trades and, really, all of the construction world.

You see a lot of people retiring and not as many people coming into that.

We see a dearth in the sort of mid career.

So there's a huge opportunity for young people to come in and advance very quickly.

You know, male, female, it doesn't matter.

It's really about that opportunity.

- I think this is a great time to see an example of a young woman who is just starting into her career.

Alyssa Crawford is a young woman working as a control engineer in Exeter, Lucerne County.

WVIA talked to this recent grad about how she got to where she is today.