- Demi Knight Clark here at Fabtech 2025 on the show floor, which is very exciting. You are a, you said a STEM -anist, which I love, I've never heard that phrase before, but I love that, 'cause I know you are a big advocate for welding is STEM, that is on your website, which I I had jotted that down 'cause, yes, hashtag welding is done. - We got out of that narrative about 20 years ago and now we're finally accepting it. - Yes, exactly. So kind of just continuing our conversation, this show on women in the trades. Why don't you just start off, let me know a little bit about who you are and what you're doing right now. - Yeah, so my story is probably the origin story when I was born, why I use night in my name, it's not because I'm from the South, even though I am, it's a lot of us use our middle names or our maiden names, it's three names to your name, but my grandmother was one of the first female Rosies, well, first Rosies who were all female in World War II and Welders. So her maiden name was Knight, so all the firstborn girls in my family have, since you at the time couldn't, you had to take a husband's name or you had your, You didn't have a choice in your name. There were no juniors and the thirds, the fourth, whatever. We're all named Knight in the middle. And so none of us have changed it when we got married. So I always use it no matter what. And so that's part of my origin stories, having a female that was strong in my life who did this very thing. And then an army ranger dad. So I was always doing in the 80s. I'm a Feral Gen Xer. So I was always doing the Pinewood Derby cars with my older brother and like soldering irons at age five. So I was always working with my hands and then kind of talked out of it in high school. So after taking bow tech and industrial technology classes in middle school, I was probably the last generation to take that. That's when I got out and did the college thing and went into construction as a career for a lot of my career and then decided, you know what? I'm going to go do the consulting thing and then also start a nonprofit called She Built the City in 2019, right during COVID, and then started my welding journey myself. So for the last five, seven years, taking all the training, getting whatever I could under my belt with MIG, TIG, SICK, Flux Core, Robotics Now, and Automation and Laser, which I'm obsessed with, and sounding a camp called Reimagined Rosie's. - That is amazing. I mean, that is like just a laundry list of things. That's incredible. So why don't you tell me about the Reimagining Rosie's? 'Cause this is like the first time hearing of it and it just sounds really amazing. And that's truly what kind of makes up this conversation that we're having about women in the trades. And it seems like you're a huge advocate for that. So tell me a little bit more about that. - Yeah, so Reimagined Rosie's actually started at this show last year here when we were in Orlando. I was waiting for the FMA podcast and actually a friend to get off of his podcast. And I was just sitting there texting and Dana Brown from Sparkforce Foundation came over started talking to me. I was talking about some of the workforce development 18 and up put into careers programs we were doing some accelerated welding classes. And I said, I've always loved this middle school population but I'm not an educator, I don't know how to do this. Running a camp sounds really a lot and you're running a day job, so how do you do this? And she was the one that removed all the barriers. She was like, I think this is the coolest thing for you to have some kind of STEM, really go the robotics side, really go the exploration side into the automation with middle schoolers because they are digital natives, but then teach them the world. So without that kind of little small nudge to get into this, we started two beta camps. So we did one that was in title one school in Hemant, California, called Alessandro High School. And they were amazing, 36 just phenomenal kids from 11 to 17 who ended up building robots, meaning like welding huge scrap bin robots. - We gave them, we had curriculum, but we really gave them free license and range, which you don't always get in the CTE programs it's much more like rigid and structured. We're going to do plates today and we're going to do all flux score and that's all well and good. They're going to certify out to test out with their weld tests for a camp that's a week we could say hey what do you want to dream of almost startup culture what do you have in your head let's design build it and go find what you can find in the scrap bin. We didn't know how that would work our welding instructor who was for the called Josh. He had an open mind about it, but he was kind of like, I don't know. And it was amazing what they dreamed up. They wanted to end up doing a lunar rover. And so we started on some chaffes and some other stuff, but so much fun. And then in July, we were able to go to Ad Astra at Starbase in Texas, and it was a more of a charter school model. And that really turned it into my POV, seeing all these kids who could go in any direction that they wanted for college or career, they're training explorers. They're literally training kids to, if you're going out into space, you've got to be Han Solo or Ray or Finn from Star Wars. You're not only the pilot, but then you're the engineer, then you're fixing the plane and you're the mechanic, and then you have to go source parts and go kind of sell and trade and barter, and then you have to forage your own food or make your own food. So it's this whole broader spectrum. So I've been telling the welding and stem story for about a year to two years, but now it's more of, hey, why don't we go even more global than that and say, we're training explorers, whether a kid ends up going to college and ends up being an engineer or a journalist versus a kid going to CTE. Why don't we train them all cross -functionally and expose them to all of this stuff, and then they make the choice, and we've trained an explorer in Gen Alpha. So that's kind of my new thinking is like, we're training explorers. - Yes. - Whether that's welding, that could be CNC machining, and advanced manufacturing, or that could be English. - Yeah. - I'm still training an explorer, so yeah. - That's incredible, wow. And that does kind of bring us into a little bit more in the conversation the skilled trades gap. - Yeah. - Obviously that's a huge topic right now for across the metals industry, across manufacturing, that we are seeing that. And I know the conversation that we've had a lot in our office and even with previous podcast guests is how AI is gonna play into that and how many jobs, that might've been the more traditional route of going to the four year university and getting the degree. They might be the ones on the chopping block versus we are needing now more than ever. of that generation that I was eradicated. So I went to vocational tech in seventh grade. It was just part of middle school, was sixth to eighth grade in a sound ancient, but in the 1990s, we literally did home economics for six months of the year and we learned to cook and sew. And then we came back and we did industrial tech or VOTEC, which was drill press, CNC machining, carpentry, I remember shellacking shelves, like with a hundred coats of shellac by Bob still has that show and just doing all the hands on what we would know of as a makerspace now, that was industrial tech like or vocate Votek back in the day of middle school. That was taken out when you had the rise of Y2K and the dot com. I would have loved to do that. I would have loved to be doing that. Yeah. Are definitely craving doing that. But so we went out in '99 when we have what I call more of the Google economy came out where we needed programmers. We needed cobalt and analysts and getting into the Python coding. It was a website -based world that we were moving into. So it was kind of a necessary, who knows how necessary, pendulum swing in tech. So you really had that eradicate out of school. It was replaced by afterschool STEM programming, like robotics programming. So I think I see right now in 2025 we're at an inflection point where not only I don't necessarily I understand why it's still called a trades gap or a skilled trades gap or trade skills gap but I see it more of again it's an inflection point just like 1999 2000 was of how far do we want to swing the pendulum and how much do we really need like I remember coming into welding a couple years ago and everybody was like we need 400 000 welders and I'm like, okay, my business brain is thinking on this, which welders, which process? No one could break it down to me of like, do we need shipbuilding and TIG welders or, you know, whatever. - Do we actually need, yeah. - Oil and gas in the middle of Texas or rig welding. Do we need aerospace primarily TIG and exotic alloys and you get really technical and they were already into the laser welding. Tell me the breakdown of, out of that 400 ,000, how many by process and what is, how far will that go if we don't have it? Because the inflection point is automation. So to me, I ask bigger questions of, is it really a gap or is it an opportunity to say, right now it could be, depending on the company and how far they let it go, do you have zero people working on this and you are losing business? Or do you have aging out workers that you need to try to reskill skill who want to stay in for another 20 years, which there is a lot of that that we're not accounting for. And I say monetizing in statistics. We are leaving that out of the statistics. They're choosing to stay. It's not because they can't retire. I talk to plenty of, it's a lot of guys, but I talk to plenty of guys that are either going back and they've had their own companies or they've been in a big industrial firm and the overtime is great. So they choose to stay or they have a chance to teach. So they'll let them be the instructors so the new population come in. And there's a lot of impact to that when you're at that age in your career. I know me at 48, I'm all about like, okay, I could go make a ton of money, but how is that helping when I'm dust, right? I mean, the impact is in how can you put more into this generation. - What are you leaving behind, yeah. - So I think there's a lot of opportunity for companies to look at that, to say, if it's not a, oh my gosh, we need 10 now and we can't hire fast enough of this human. We can use who we have on staff to say, how can we bring in the new populations? But then also, how much automation is solving for this and who needs to run that automation? Because I've never looked at this as, it's replacing humans with either AI or automation. Either the robots, co -bots that are out on this field or show or laser, which is - >> You need someone to work which is dramatically reducing the uptime of training. You need someone that is going to be programming that and that is its own training. So rather than saying replace one for the other, that's what we should look at. It's like, okay, out of that 400 ,000, well, maybe it's only 100 ,000 that we need if we are pairing that with a robotic arm welder. That trait-- - Teaching these in tandem, yeah. - That operator could be doing the work of 20 handheld welders. So those aren't people you're replacing. Those are deficit. That's a gap. So really, do we need 100 ,000 or do we need 400 ,000? And that's going to be a moving target for the next five years. And then AI just further makes that a bigger decision. It's how much of that can run autonomously. But it's all opportunity as one, the business owner who can get cost down, but then also pull from for a population of kids. It's no longer the whole CTE versus college. These are explorers, so those afterschool STEM robotic kids could be your laser welders in four years. Why aren't we looking at it like that? - So what is your best advice to those business owners that are running into that? Is it truly just going to these younger generations and investing in them? Or is it also teaching, like you said the people that they don't want to retire yet, but they have to have those newer, I guess, more updated skills, would you say? - Yeah, I think many things can be true all at once. So everything you just said depends on the company or it depends on the side of the industry that's trying to tackle this, but it should be a combination of all. And then as we go further and further into those buckets, like if AI is freaking everyone out right now, again, I always look at it as be like, well, let's lean into that, right? I'm not going to be afraid of it. I want to know if this is coming, if I don't do something about it, that's my own personal stance, but someone's going to solve for this if I don't. So I'm going to lean into that for whatever degree I want. - Absolutely. - For AI, maybe that's only 10 % of the conversation right now, but in four, if not two or three years, it's probably going to be 60 % of the conversation. But at least you've got it there on your parking lot to say at some point, yeah, Yeah, let's bring this into the conversation. - We're not gonna ignore it like it's not right here. It's gonna happen whether or not we get on board with it. - You cannot just stick your head in a sentence, any industry, but I see it a lot here because there's a lot of just paradigms, a lot of business models that have worked for a long time and so there's no reason to change. And so that's why I think the whole, like we have such a skills gap, such a skills gap. That's why I question immediately like, I hear you, I acknowledge that. But is it, or is it more of we need a combination of factors to come into play that we are solving for? It's not really a gap, it's an opportunity to say, oh wait, maybe we're just not leaning into our existing-- - The people we have now. - The existing people we have to say, what are you interested in? Or, hey, if you could retire tomorrow and we actually really needed you to, would you go do it? - Yeah. - Or, and then have it be masters of their own destiny of how much that they want to learn versus how many that are brand new entering the industry that you need to go and recruit, right? So there's that conversation. And then it is, okay, if recruit is the thing, how far down the chain of age do we need to start? And we're seeing that younger and younger every day. - How young do you think right now? 'Cause I mean, you said, you were doing that in the, you said seventh grade. - Yeah. - And you were in, so how young are you seeing a lot of these kids like wanting to get into that now or even showing the interest. Yeah, we have like offline talk kids to weld as young as 6 years old really now that's a kid that shocks me actual awareness. Yeah, you know, you're not just saying like all 6 year olds come over and let's let you out holding the gun with them. Yes, I would say it's welding. Quadruple light, you know, we're not saying they're putting them in a booth and saying run this play on 8th and - They're just getting the hands -on experience, but not truly like-- - And understanding, you know, striking in our, understanding running a bead, dealing with AC /DC electricity, something that is potentially very dangerous, but also very empowering, right? To say, oh, I want to keep doing this. It can be done at just about any age. It's more of saying, look at what they're remembering, and then also where you have, I keep using the term inflection points, the biggest opportunity for them to make some decisions. So right now, I think build summerings .com and Blue Forge Alliance, they're going into elementary schools with the US Navy and talking about shipbuilding. Now they're doing that with PVC pipe and building periscopes. So it's age -appropriate stuff, but they're planting those seeds. - To know that it's not just the same path that I think, at least even when I was growing up, like you do definitely get this sense of as you're going through school, you're all kind of being guided towards that same exact path. And you go to, you're in middle school and then you get to high school and now they're prepping you for college and everyone goes to college and you have to do that. But I do love the fact that we're seeing so much more now that just like when we had Chris Lukey on the podcast, he was saying, obviously we still need the engineers and the people that are going to get those engineering degrees, but at the same time, We want the non -college fast in these technical schools and learning how to do things like welding. Those need to both be viable paths, not just for the longest time. And I even know as, you know, I had a mother who was in tech sales, but then my dad, he was always a laborer. He worked construction my entire life. So I kind of saw a little bit of both, like what you do when you go to college and then what you do if you went straight into the trades. And so I had the opportunity to see both sides of that, but I think just showing more kids now that those are both totally viable and one isn't seen as less than the other. - That's the biggest, is destigmatizing. I think when I got into welding, my biggest thing four or five years ago was like, I just want to destigmatize the trades. I'm sick and tired of fighting this fight with a lot of parents who are like, my kid is less than for choosing this route. When I was, I have 19 and 21 year old daughters. So I've raised a generation of two kids and their friends and been around all the parents and all the things where I've been in trades myself. And then seeing that kind of like, oh, you know, almost like a pat your head kind of thing. But then seeing this population of kids that has, I don't want to go down the, like, attention span road. We're a very immediate society. - Yeah, - Instant gratification in the phones. - They're digital natives times a million. They'll pick up a voyage arc system that is, you know, your VRAR from Lincoln, and they'll teach us things about that, because it's just so native to them to go down that road. And we don't give them enough credit for that, but they're craving the handheld stuff. Like, again, the pendulum, in my opinion, is just like so far that when you do give them the opportunity to, I just call it be explorers and try things and don't hold them accountable to say, oh, because you put, you know, we put a handheld torch in your hand and now you welded and oh, by the way, your grades are kind of, you should be a welder, stomp with all that. See, hey, that kid put a torch in his or her hand, they flew through it, we would test them out and we've seen this in 12 welds, like I would put that kid through a weld test, like 2G weld test today after welding for three hours, because it just, the pickup rate is so quick. And we see that even in CT school, but don't talk them out of it. Just let them continue on that exploration. So if I was in your audience right now and you asked me that question of like, what could, there's so much that it's overwhelming to think who should you try to like pour into right now as your future Boy, middle school. 11 to 16 is absolutely the most impressionable age because they're not getting that chance to explore. Now more than ever in 2025 and beyond, it just doesn't exist as much. And then also the fact that it's pre -guidance counselor intervention. So to your point earlier, I don't want to give guidance counselors a bad rap, but they're definitely-- - They're guided down kind of that same path. - There are state rewards for saying 98 % of our kids are going to college. So unless that pendulum was to swing more to say, just as much career readiness is being rewarded, they're gonna continue down that path. So getting to the kids to where they can be advocates for themselves when they do get to that guidance counselor intervention at 16. - I'd say this is the path for me. And it's also totally like viable and completely fulfilling path as well. And I think that's talking more highly about it. >> Just as much money if not more. I mean, I know people love to go down that like, I could be a welder and make $200 ,000 a year. That's doing a lot of welding and it's very specific. That's not every welder. There is an average set pay right now. But again, this generation, if you're talking about, if I'm going and doing camps for middle schoolers, they are your employee in about 10 years. So knowing how fast our technology is rolling, and just in one year alone of seeing how this is now 80 /20 automation at Fabtech, whereas last year was, I'm probably going to get the stat wrong, but it looked with my own eyes to be more like 60 /40 in their lifetime towards their career. They need to know robotics. They need to know the automation. So I challenge on the flip side of that, not just the employers, but also the CTE schools, how much are you getting into teaching the robotics, teaching the co -bots, the robots, that is not only a great recruit mechanism, but also that is going to be a lot of their jobs. Yes, hand -to -wielding is not going to die, but the robotics is going to be a key part of it. Yeah. And you're talking about some of these robotics. You said co -bots, is that collaborative robots? Yeah. So I don't know as much about that at all. But tell me a little bit more, because that actually kind of introduces the a lot of these emerging technologies that are coming out in our industry 'cause we are a tech company within this industry. So, but we're obviously a, we're a platform, we're a software but I just find it super interesting to learn more about these just, you walk down the aisles at this show and it is insane some of the stuff that you see. So, tell me a little bit more 'cause I don't even know what the co -bots are, just I'd like to know more about that. - Yeah, co -bots are when you're working alongside a human's pattern of what has been done versus traditional robotics, where it's, I mean, you'll see some amazing stuff that's happening on the show floor right now, being able to map and design the program themselves. And now with AI assistance, they can fix themselves. What used to be, you needed engineers on a mission control, kind of like watching what's happening and being able to fix the brain. Now with AI, it can be intuitive to where it's, you know, like in It's like in a shipbuilding application, or probably aerospace right now is a better example, where it can figure out its fail and deposition rates and all the things and fix it on the fly. I mean, literally fix it on the fly with - >> That's so crazy. >> AI brain behind it. Again, I don't use the word replace. We'll see what augments humans and /or those just so far beyond what we're been capable of doing with humans, because we are fallible, we do fail things. Here's human error everywhere in our worlds, which can be a great thing, but I think seeing that now out on the show floor, it's gonna change everything we do. The AI piece is what I'm really fascinated by this year, just because we're definitely an industry that is used to having, here's products, manufacturers sell you Here's the machines you want to put on your shop floor. And I saw that with lasers last year is like so many employers or so many shops were buying lasers and then they're sitting in the back because there's nobody that's been trained on that. Yes, there's a safety issue, but then there's also, we don't know how to use this. We just hear that it's going to make us so much more efficient all the things. So we've got to catch up in the training and then also understand, you know, the capacity of AI, are we going to be hiring for AI -based welding engineers next year? They have to have some types of certifications or are those the high schoolers? So it's mind -boggling, but then also exciting for me who I just think, if you can't see anything else positive because it's too scary for you to wrap your head around, see the fact that we haven't solved for any of this and there's a lot of things that can be true all at once but when you dive into it, we're now being able to advertise to all populations of high schoolers. It's no longer in my opinion being kind of an outsider looking in for so many years and now in it, all these kids, when I start talking about, "Hey, would you be a welder at SpaceX or would you be going to aerospace industry?" It's like, yeah, and they never would have been enticed at all in the last couple of years. - Well, 'cause like you said, it's totally foreign to them. They've now been growing up around so much technology and phones and everything that a, maybe a degree with something more like computers is kind of like, well, we're kind of used to that. But then when you're talking about things that they have never thought that they could even do at any point, like holding a blow torch or doing any amount of welding in their lives. And you bring this up and they're like, actually that is really cool. I would love to consider that. So it's just like even putting it in front of them and not just saying like, oh yeah, they're going into the trades like, and putting it more as just how you explain it, like with SpaceX, like giving it a more real life. Like that is an actual tangible thing that you could do if you put your mind to it. And kind of just changing the way that we talk about the trades. Well, and I tell the Lincoln Electric folks all the time because they have at their welding school, which is To me, it's like a Super Bowl Disney any time I go to Euclid, Ohio and take classes I feel like I'm with the best of the best, but multiple manufacturers have schools But Lincoln has a four -week robotic arm welding Certification four weeks they get that certification Definitely have to go out into the wild and use it. but they're right alongside either welding engineers or structural engineers, mechanical engineers at these massive companies, and they didn't go to a four -year degree. That's one example. I think there's gonna be more training to come, like in terms of laser welding, handheld and /or robotic, and then also robot -cobot certifications. I know AWS just put out their first one for robotic arm welding, where it helps to E -School say, okay, here's what we think is a standard, just how long it should take. And now let's go get grant funding, whatever, to add that into our portfolio. And now let's go do it. We desperately need to go down that road because right now their only options are to go get those four -year degrees, which are still justly needed. I know every welding engineer that comes out of Ohio State, they never have to worry about a job. It's like within minutes they are hired. At the same time, we need the ones that are just going through the certification program and proving that that's almost like the new CTE. That's the new, hey, you could do the electrician thing, you could go do the HVAC if you're doing trades, or you could do robotics with welding. Get that same type of certification, could go to community college maybe for a year, or just do the four week certification and go into the and keep learning like that's almost equivalent to an engineering job right now so that for parents especially should destigmatize but then also I've got two in college right now I don't there has to be a ceiling to this at some point but until there is a cost why we're not capitalizing on that even more right now is that you've got so many parents listening that may not have listened five to ten years ago because they're like my it's going to be a doctor, a lawyer or whatever. Their kid might not be doing that degree now, but you're still paying $50 ,000 a year. Of course the trades look good. So when you also say, well, this is STEM trades, they're working on the most advanced manufacturing systems you could think of. This is not a dirty shop floor. So why is there still a stigma? If that was kind of the case. - And what's funny is those are the same people that It's all stuff that we need. These are things happening in the background of our everyday lives. The building that we're in right now. Someone has to build it. - Oh, there's plenty of wealth around here, yeah. - The bridges that we drove on to get to this building today. Like those are all things that we, me, I'll speak for myself that we normally don't have to worry about, we don't have to think about. I will, I'll never, it'll just go right over my heads, but those are things that we need in our society. And yet, it's like the people driving on said bridge that's like yeah the the trade it's the trades is kind of uh so it's it's funny when you think about it in that aspect because we need all of those people but it's for whatever reason was so stigmatized for so long well someone gave me a statistic and I wish I could give them the uh attribution but you walk through over or under 750 at least 750 welded pieces every single day. So whether that's, you know, - Really interesting, yeah. - We're walking under it or a bridge that you're driving over, something you're walking under. The funny thing I think as welders, we all can't unsee is good or bad welds, but I can't, like, we have season tickets to my daughter's college football, and I can't go through like a stadium and not be looking around. - Just be-- - Like, rate the wealth. Not loving that 60 years old and not really structurally sound anymore. It's about a five out of 10 on the big rating. But yeah, and then like my kids will send me pictures where they are in an airport. - They're like, "Yeah, look at this." - They're like, "Oh, look at the airplane wing." And I'm like, "You may or may not "want to get on that airplane right now." - You're like, as you're actively sitting in this seat on the airplane, I'm gonna not tell you how bad tell you how bad I think I'm not even like a CW. I can't even imagine if I was a welding inspector. They must be like, I have to close my eyes a lot as there are things that are over our heads. You're like, yeah, it definitely could have been better. But okay, I don't know, maybe it proves the case that you don't need as much skill, but I don't think it does. Yeah, exactly. Well, I definitely want to pivot to, obviously, kind of continuing the conversation on women in the trades. So specifically, what has your experience been overall? I mean, obviously very positive, but working in a mostly male dominated industry and really making a name for yourself. Like truly, it's like just all the work that you've done so far, how has that experience been for you as a woman? - Yeah, I would say growing up in my career and then having kids and I was in my late 20s and trying to do the daycare thing. I mean, that's such a thing for women in any industry right now, for millennial women. And it makes me so sad that we still haven't figured it out. Like my generation was one that, not only did we come into a male dominant industry, which there are multiple of those in most industries, unfortunately, but really in construction. It's very, at the time when I got in, like 2003, it was definitely ego driven. There was a lot of just relationships that were good old boys. And I would say that-- And you just have to the 20 something year old me would be like it makes me so angry the 48 year old me looks back on that of like I'm glad you went through that because now you have the perspective of saying how do I want that to change now And if there's still a paradigm of only like four percent That's why I jumped even further into welding because it was like four percent were women and welding and my grandmother would be rolling over Intergrade, you know, I mean right her whole what they did, so that it would hopefully be progressive moving forward. And it just made me, like I saw for things, it drives me nuts when there's things to solve for. So that was my biggest when I first got into the industry of welding on that side. And now that I'm here, I have a more global view of it because I think it's just diversifying in general. So yes, we need more women, but we can't just, I'm only one lived experience moment. I identify as identify as white. So we need women of all color. We need people who identify as everything. We need men of color. And we just need welders, really. We need whatever explorer that we're going to build with whatever ratio of automation and technology and health health welding. We need kids who want to do this. So I have globalized my focus to say, yes, we need women. And there is definitely a specific way you have to speak to women and also create an environment that is comfortable for them. But at the same time, we need everybody. So how do we speak to all of them and make it, 'cause one thing that I saw in this last 10 years was going into classes, seeing only one girl or seeing only one woman, it's the same in engineering. And then saying, "Let's talk to you." They also don't want to be singled out. They're already singled out enough. - Yes, absolutely. - So it's definitely a barrier of entry. So I try to figure out like, how can I make it? You're one of many. So every time I can walk into a classroom where there's at least three girls or three women, my best example was having seven women out of 15 at Alessandro High School when I went to California a couple of years ago for a women at work campaign. And the vibe was totally totally different. It wasn't about like, hey, here are the girls in the class. Can you talk to the girls? And they're like segmented off. There was no bro culture. It was these girls took up space. They were absolutely respected by the guys because there was enough seats in the room at the table that it was not an issue. So I try to look at it like that of saying like, I will definitely do women -focused events. I'll do whatever it takes to see more girls and women in the trades. But I want to see it as being, "Hey, we need everybody and to make it as equitable as possible, how do we get it to where it's not about just saying, how do we get more women here?" They're more comfortable being generalized and saying, "Oh, I just want to try this." Just like the guys want to try this. Because honestly, when you look at the stats, guys aren't being introduced to welding either. So it just needs to be introduced all kids. - Everybody, yeah. - And then take a look at the population. Do you have enough girls in the room to be introduced to rather than making all -girl cohorts? 'Cause when I started She Built the City, which was more like carpentry trades and getting them into like what would be called the true trade, we were doing girl -only cohorts and things of that nature. And I think there's definitely work to be done there. But what I saw was even more of an opportunity to say, hey, these girls have to go to work with guys sooner rather than later. So how do we make this a cross -world population? - Yeah, you can't keep separating it like over and over. You still have to kind of meld everybody back together. - There's some safety to it for sure. There's definitely positives to having all female cohorts. But I think my personal opinion is to see it in small groups and then they've got to be introduced to the greater whole and then that's why I like middle school because since nobody's been introduced you can make it about a very even playing yeah and then say hey what girls do I really see a spark in like quite literally and how do you feed into that to kind of like light the light bulb and then she's gonna light other light bulbs and we can talk to administrators and things like that I think it's gotta be more organic it's not Go after women in welding. Yeah, they're like whoa like whoa, and it's a lot That's a good point like you said because I didn't even think about it that way that they don't want to be singled out Even more than they already are if they're that one girl in the classroom of all boys and think about middle school anyway They're dealing with enough emotionally maturity wise. It's a rough time The last thing they want is a label on their head of like the girl in here in the girl in the room Yes, okay. Yeah, - Yeah, that's an excellent way to even put that. And I, in my mind, I'm like, yeah, if you want more women in the trades, you go for more women. But that makes sense that it's more, no, let's everybody, the door needs to be open for everybody, not just women. - I will say, there's something that I'm really fascinated with this year that I kind of started into last year when I was working with girls and women of creating safer spaces to where they could be really honest. And I mean, the problem when you do have one girl, this is an industry agnostic, it could be any industry, 'cause they feel like they have to be perfect. They cannot mess up in front of the guys. It's extreme pressure, but they're putting on themselves and /or being the only one in the room. There's nothing to diffuse that for them. So a lot of times they're gonna quit, but they don't feel like they're perfect. Of course they're gonna be like, I'm substandard in this. Meanwhile, the guys making a 70 % grade and doing just fine, but there's 20 of them. And that's no offense to the guy. It's just the comfort and safety and being able to take up space in the room, right? That is definitely the challenge. And I see why there's cohorts. But there's something called third spaces. That's a bigger communication chain right now, which is to the point of kids not being able to be exposed to more hands on anything anymore because of digital world, we've really eradicated what's named as a third space. So, a first space is considered home. A second space, depending on your age, will be work or school. - And then third spaces used to be community centers, you know, Girl Scouts, Boys and Girls Clubs, movie theaters, malls, places that teenagers could go if they couldn't drive. And it were not-- - The extracurriculars, extracurriculars, libraries, like places where things were going that they could explore. Yeah, we can opt into after school for kids, especially if you're affluent, not everybody's affluent, it can pay for all this after school programming or travel team sports and all this stuff. But there is definitely an opportunity for us to combine all of that with saying, how can we make these diverse third spaces again that these kids create? Because when we make them for them, like in camps, they love using their hands. They love to get off of the technology for a while. - And it's not like they don't feel forced to be there. It's not like when they might feel even in school, where you're like, I have to be here because my parents want me to be here, but it becomes this like they are willingly showing up every day to be in this space. - And so I do think there's an opportunity. I don't have it all figured out, but if people want to start exploring like, wow, she's saying a lot of stuff that could be confusing, you know, if you're really trying to tackle the women part, like make a third space that's also safe, could just be this like malleable population where sometimes it's all kids, sometimes it's just women, sometimes it's just the guys, you know? Sometimes it's more of a diverse population or it's multilingual. It's just looking at it more globally rather than just saying like, we need a, somebody gave me this when I first got into welding. They gave me this to think about where he was like, he was not trying to be argumentative. He was certainly not trying to be anti women in the industry. But he was like, just tell me the business case for having more women on my job site. Which is a, it's a, that is a realistic thing to ask. And it's like, does gender make a difference? And you could go down that bunny trail, not for us to solve for this podcast. But it really did make me think like I can see how they're looking at that from and really you could globalize that to just diversification in general and what I come back to is absolutely here and acknowledge that point I don't know if I have a total answer for that should it be 100 % women on your job site probably not but at the same time it's more of a recruiting thing of like listen if you're able to recruit everybody you have way less of a recruiting problem so if it's always been one population that is coming your way and that population isn't enough anymore, that's a different story. But yeah, if you're just saying like, have more women to have more women, like what is 50 /50 going to do for you? Is it going to make you more efficient? Is it going to make it a better culture? I've seen somewhere, again, that's why I say that the support of environment is just as important as recruiting because we could go higher depending on a company, 50 % women coming into the next training class. But because it's an older culture that may not be conducive to that, it's actually more problematic because there's bullying going on. There might not be the adequate PPE on site, which is so basic, a smaller PPE. There might not be showers on site or even a women's restroom. Like, are you prepared, if you want, to have 30 to 50 % women on your job site or in your shop, you know, whatever the roles may be, are you gonna be able to keep them? Or is it just you're shoving - Is it just, yeah. - everybody else and like, oh, we have women now. You know, like, people will finally get off our case box. - Shut up about it, yes. - I start, when people say that to me, I immediately start asking questions. - Are you actually prepared for that? - Is it like, how's it going for you? Like, I wanna be curious. I don't wanna come after them about it, but How's it going? Like, do you feel like you're learning in a supporting environment? - And creating a conducive environment. Yeah, just like you said, of actually welcoming all these women in, are you just saying that to say it? - Yeah, like I've checked the box, now you can't come after me 'cause I don't have enough women. And I do see that sometimes with, somebody told me that a CEO friend was like, well, you create kind of safe spaces for C -suite men to be able to talk about this and say like, "Oh, so I don't have to have 50 /50 women?" I'm like, "I don't know, do you?" But you can dialogue about it, 'cause I mean, imagine you can't really take a stage when you're a CEO and making, you're hired to be a CEO, to be the head chopping block, right? If stuff goes wrong, they come back to you and say, "Why weren't you making your sales numbers "or efficient or the hiring is off or the culture is off?" that's going to be you on the end of the stick for that accountability wise. So if that's a case, it's very hard if you flip side them to say, you know what, we're failing at recruiting. Yeah. So I kind of come at them in a safe space, like at an airplane or, you know, at a lunch talk and say, just unpack this for me. What is it about wanting to have more women on staff or diversifying your staff? Is that and again, I Again, I try to lay on now more of the technology piece and saying, hey, do you need more people or do you need more of a combination of really making smart humans that can run a lot of stuff for you? And then also that opens up the door to diversifying your recruiting population. You could go after more schools that have more women or more minorities that actually go to that school 'cause they are interested a little more in robotics and you can or the handheld stuff, so I think it's super complex, but unless they can talk about it, we're never gonna actually really address it. Otherwise it's like, no, no, no, I did that, I did that. I'm an ally. - You have to actually welcome the conversation. If you truly want to get into kind of the nitty gritty about it, you can't just expect the answer to the question of like, yeah, we'll do that. You have to actually expect like, okay, but Why are we doing it? All of those kind of follow -ups, like you said, and like, are you prepared to actually welcome them in, essentially, which I've never thought about that before, and that makes total sense. So, just to kind of wrap up a little bit, if you were talking directly to a young woman or a young girl right now, what would your best advice be to a young girl wanting to be in the trades or preparing to be in the trades or wanting to do well then, more specifically. - Yeah, get in there and do it. I'm a little more age specific about it, so if it was, if it's an elementary schooler, and we've seen them, we've seen girls and boys who are, you know, farm kids, whatever, and they're just like zooming it out and they're six to nine -year -old years, be an explorer, try everything, fail, fail at it. I tell the middle schoolers that, because again, they're a generation with, which is Gen Alpha, not only are they digital and natives, but they're also taught to be like, don't fail. Like, get it right, do well, do all the things. We need kids failing forward, because if they fail at welds, make bad welds, run terrible passes with the incorrect machine setting, try anything that you're curious about. I think they're all, they're already native to being curious on TikTok and they're all YouTubers. they will suck up everything in YouTube, like consumers. So go do that with handheld anything. If you want to try carpentry, go do it. You have the opportunity to do it. Get into a makerspace. Parents, get your kids using anything with their hands, just to explore. So they have that in their tool belt of knowledge to start once they do have that guidance, counselor intervention. And that girl, or wanting to get it in the trades, I say now go and figure out getting the job that nobody else wants to do. - And like you said, better advocate for themselves too when they're in those conversations. At such a young age when, at least from what I experienced, you have no clue what you want to do yet. - Yeah. Like when you're in high school. - And that's okay. - But at least giving just more exposure to things for them to be able to be like, you know, I did Demi's camp and I actually think I really might be interested in doing something like that for my future. Like even putting that in front of them, like just so you know, this is an option for you. So I think I totally agree with all of your points and I think that that's going to be the biggest thing and hopefully that we see that more moving forward too. When we need to stop putting pressure on these kids to know after trying something once that that should be their career path, I say this to electrical unions all the time where I'm like y 'all have a phenomenal four year journeyman apprentice paid for get paid while you work all the right selling points jobs but we don't give them an opportunity to explore and try the electrical field in middle school minus if they're in STEM robotics they do they don't get a chance to try that so they're going straight in and you want 100 to day, we can't expect that when they've never tried it, but now they're committing four years of their life. We don't do that with college. The average college attendee has spent two and a half years in high school researching and /or visiting and /or going down that road with a guidance counter of what they should be and where they should go. Why are we not doing that with middle schoolers with the trade? So that's a real question. So again, we have phenomenal end user programs for call butts and seeds, you know, the job itself. - Yeah. - But we don't have the exploration paths that we desperately need. And that's why I tell everybody, if you're curious to get in, get in with middle schoolers in Jennifer, they will be your employees in four to eight years. - And truly, isn't that, I mean, not that everything should revolve around work and finding a job, but obviously we all know that's kind of how the world works and need money to survive. So you might as well do it. Doing something you love, doing something you're passionate about, doing something that we also need. We need more of you. So at the end of the day, it's a little funny, isn't it? That we're always expecting everyone to go to college, but that college does not guarantee you a job at all. So it's so funny because I mean-- - No, this latest batch of graduates is showing that. - Yeah, and the placements with, it seems like the placement, I don't know the numbers. You probably know them much better than me, but the placements with Josh's placement out of the trade seems much higher. I would imagine that it is. It just seems like these fast track programs to be able to just put you where you need to be and just as quickly as possible, which I just find very interesting that parents, kids sometimes, you know, stigmatize that and look down on that when it's like, don't you want your kid to have a job? Wouldn't it be interesting having just something that they might be we're good at and very passionate about as well, even if it's not sitting in a college classroom somewhere. - Yeah. - Or working retail. I mean, if DoorDash is your only option, which is respectable, why? You can't knock the $22 an hour coming out of a welding school is too low. When we've got gig workers just making it work right now. - Yeah. - So it should, again, we have about 100 factors right now that should be de -stigmatizing trade, just naturally, right? - Yes, for sure. - Well, this was a fantastic conversation and honestly, I think so much of what we talked about will resonate with the audience and just the conversations around the trades gap and also just women in our industry. So I so appreciate you taking the time to do the podcast. Yeah, it was fantastic and I hope you have a great rest of your fab tag. - Same.