A reflective exploration of how informal mentorship and continuous learning from colleagues across all levels can shape a successful career in construction safety, emphasizing curiosity, respect, and the value of extracting lessons from every experience.
Her Story
About Katherine
I’m a construction safety professional who believes the best safety programs are built in the field, not behind a desk. I enjoy learning how work gets done, working alongside project teams and trades, and finding practical ways to manage risk without unnecessarily complicating the job.
I’m naturally curious and tend to ask a lot of questions—not just about what we’re doing, but why we’re doing it that way. That approach has helped me build strong relationships in the field and become a better safety professional.
What I enjoy most about construction is that there is always something new to learn. Every project, trade, and crew brings a different challenge. My goal is to be someone people are comfortable coming to with a question or concern, while also being willing to speak up when something needs to change.
Outside of work, I enjoy creative projects, music, writing, and finding new ways to turn ideas into something tangible.
Her Interview
Ten minutes with Katherine
01What do you attribute your success to?
I attribute my success to being willing to learn, ask questions, and spend time understanding how the work actually gets done. Safety is most effective when you understand the people, the work, and the challenges in the field. I try to be approachable, consistent, and willing to have the difficult conversations when they’re needed.
02What’s the best career advice you’ve ever received?
Learn the work, not just the rules. Understanding why a task is being done and how the crew plans to accomplish it makes it much easier to identify hazards, find practical solutions, and earn trust in the field.
03What advice would you give to young women entering your industry?
Don’t feel like you have to know everything before you belong in the room. Ask questions, learn from the people doing the work, and be willing to speak up when something doesn’t look right. Confidence comes from experience, and experience comes from being willing to get involved.
04What are the biggest challenges or opportunities in your field right now?
One of the biggest challenges has been learning how to balance compliance with the realities of active construction. The answer can’t always be “stop the work.” Good safety management means understanding the requirement, understanding the operation, and working with the team to find a safe and practical path forward.
05What values are most important to you in your work and personal life?
In my work, what matters most to me is doing something that has a real impact. Safety is ultimately about people, and I never want to lose sight of that behind policies, procedures, or numbers. I value being someone people can trust, being willing to speak up when it matters, and leaving a project better than I found it.
In my personal life, I value the people and experiences that make life meaningful. I’ve learned to appreciate the ordinary moments, stay curious, keep creating, and make time for the things and people that matter. At the end of the day, success means doing work I’m proud of while still having a life worth going home to.
Her Content Hub
Articles by Katherine
Not Every Mentor Knows They’re Your Mentor
How asking questions and learning from everyone around you can shape a successful career in an unfamiliar industry.
Learning From Everyone: The Unexpected Power of Mentorship
I started a career in construction safety without a traditional background in construction.
I didn’t grow up in the trades. I didn’t enter the industry with years of field experience behind me. There was a great deal I simply did not know.
What I did have was the willingness to ask questions, pay attention, and learn from the people around me.
Looking back, that may have been one of the most important tools I brought with me.
Early in my career, I learned quickly that construction is full of people who know things you cannot learn from a manual alone. Regulations and formal training matter. Certifications matter. Policies and procedures matter. But there is another kind of education that happens when you are standing in the field with someone who has performed the work for twenty years and is willing to explain what actually happens when the plan meets reality.
So I asked questions.
I asked electricians why something was installed a particular way. I asked tradespeople to walk me through their work. I listened when superintendents explained sequencing and logistics. I watched how project owners approached risk and accountability. I paid attention to the people who could walk into a complicated situation, identify what mattered, and communicate it without creating unnecessary chaos.
Over time, I stopped thinking of mentorship as something that had to be formal.
Some of the most influential people in my career have probably never considered themselves my mentors.
They were simply people who took five minutes to explain something.
People who challenged an assumption.
People who showed me a better way to communicate.
People who let me watch how they handled a difficult situation.
People who answered one more question when I was still trying to understand the bigger picture.
Every trade I have worked alongside has taught me something. Every project has taught me something. Project owners, superintendents, safety professionals, engineers, coordinators, and workers in the field have all contributed pieces to how I understand the work today.
And not every lesson came from a positive experience.
Some people teach you what good leadership looks like.
Others teach you exactly what you never want your leadership to become.
Some projects show you the value of strong systems and clear expectations. Others show you what happens when those systems are missing.
Some mistakes teach you more than successes ever could.
Even conflict can be useful if you are willing to examine it carefully enough to ask: What can I take from this? What would I do differently? What should I carry forward, and what should I leave behind?
That does not mean every difficult experience needs to be reframed as something positive. Some experiences are simply difficult. Some decisions are poor decisions. Some environments are unhealthy.
But there can still be information in them.
That distinction has become important to me.
Being grateful for what an experience taught you does not require pretending the experience itself was good.
It means refusing to waste the lesson.
As my career has developed, I have also realized that entering an industry without knowing everything can create an unexpected advantage: you have permission to be curious.
You can ask why.
You can ask someone to show you.
You can admit when you don’t know.
And when you approach those conversations with genuine respect for another person’s expertise, people are often remarkably generous with what they know.
Eventually, those individual lessons begin connecting.
A conversation with an electrician changes how you evaluate an electrical hazard. A superintendent’s explanation of sequencing changes how you think about planning. A worker’s frustration with a procedure makes you reconsider whether a system works as well in practice as it does on paper. Watching a strong leader communicate during an incident changes how you communicate during the next one.
Little pieces of information become a larger understanding of how people, work, risk, and systems interact.
That is how much of my career has been built.
Not through one mentor.
Not through one class.
Not through one project.
Through hundreds of interactions with people who knew something I didn’t.
I still approach the industry that way because there will always be someone on a project who knows something I don’t.
Experience has not made that less true.
It has simply made me better at recognizing it.
If I could offer one piece of advice to someone entering an unfamiliar industry, it would be this:
Do not wait for someone to officially become your mentor before you start learning from them.
Pay attention.
Ask good questions.
Respect expertise wherever you find it.
Learn from the people doing the work.
Learn from good leadership.
Learn from poor leadership.
Learn from the project that goes well and the one that does not.
Keep what makes you better. Leave behind what does not.
Your career will eventually become a collection of those lessons.
Mine certainly has.
And I am grateful to every person—whether they knew it or not—who contributed one.
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