Brandi Evanicky

I attribute my success to commitment, hard work, and dedication. My family and the support that comes from them has been huge, along with my will to just never give up. I love what I do, and even though there are challenges, I keep pushing forward. The people that have surrounded me along my journey have definitely influenced my life in big ways and have really shaped me into the person that I am today. I think I have a really amazing ability to just proceed forward, no matter what the task is. I just don't give up.

The best career advice I've ever received was really more encouragement than specific advice - it was to have people around you that believe in you. Someone told me, 'Never give up. Keep on persevering. You're great at what you do. Don't stop. Don't allow people to come into your world and let their toxic words affect what you have going on and your true abilities to get where you want to be.' I've held on to that my whole career. My whole career has been built on that encouragement and that advice to not allow other people's toxicity to affect my ability to do what I need to do in order to get where I want to be.

My advice would come in both the form of caution as well as encouragement. For caution, I'd say look at yourself first and make sure you understand that this is a male-dominated field. Try to figure out how much criticism you can take, because if you cannot keep yourself grounded amongst criticism, then this field might not be the area you want to dive into. But on the encouragement side, I'd say if you do get into it, if you do enjoy it, or if you're struggling, I will always be here. I'm not going anywhere. My phone will always be available to you. I don't care if you work with me or not, if you're with a general contractor or in scaffolding or steel erection, whatever it may be, I will always be there to help and guide you along the way. I believe in you, and I'd love to see you on my side of the fence one day. You can do it. If I can do it, then you can do it. It's not for the faint of heart, but just know that you'll always have support. As a female, we need to know that someone else has our back, that we're not jumping into it alone.

The biggest challenge is definitely that it's a male-dominated environment. With that comes the constant need to prove yourself over and over and over again that you are qualified and you're the right person in the position. It's all about 'what have you done for me lately' type stuff. The wording that we put out there has to be extremely strategic because men, in a lot of ways, are more sensitive to criticism than women are, and especially whenever it's coming from a woman, they don't always like that too much. When I moved to this new company in August, it's been a lot of re-proving myself once again. It can be very trying to know your capabilities, know your abilities, and constantly still have to be almost proving yourself in order to not get a bunch of pushback from these guys, because if you don't, then they will just run all over you.

There's a little phrase that I try to live by, and that is: When you do the right things, you can't be wrong. I try to carry that with me and do not so much what my heart tells me, but more so what my head tells me, and what I know to be right and correct, whether it be through the Word of God or through the knowledge that I've gained along the way. I live a lot logically, very, very much so, but always with that idea in the back of my mind that if I do the right things and I make the right decisions based on the knowledge that I have, then the correct things will come, the right things will come, the results will follow. But if I'm doing the wrong things, then I cannot expect anything right to come.