Laura Gleason

I attribute my success to hard work and perseverance, loyalty, and dedication. When you're loyal to your job - I mean, if you've got a good job, not all jobs are great - but if you've got a good place and you're loyal to it, you can go pretty far. My company really values family and loyalty. I've been with the owner through the ups and downs, and we really are like family. When my mom needed her liver transplant, they helped me get all the things in place so I could take off when she got the transplant, be there for her, and help her recover. They kept her in their thoughts all the time and helped me feel better about my position, that I wasn't going to lose it for having to be out of work so much when she was going through that. That kind of support and loyalty goes both ways.

The biggest advice that I give to my daughter is to just follow your heart and do what makes you happy. I think it's important for young women to see other women in positions that they thought they could never be in. Construction has always been a man's world, and when you're a woman in a man's world, they don't always want to give you the time of day because you're a woman. It's hard to get some people to listen to you - that's been a hurdle, trying to get over the fact that some men are like, no, you're a woman, I'm not talking to you. Even some of our own inspectors will say they want to speak to Nick instead, and he's not even really an inspection coordinator. But you have to persevere through that.

I think the biggest challenge is that construction has always been a man's world. When you're a woman in a man's world, they don't always want to give you the time of day because you're a woman. It's hard to get some people to listen to you and stuff like that - that's been a hurdle, trying to get over the fact that some men are like, no, you're a woman, I'm not talking to you. Even some of our own inspectors are like, I'm going to speak to Nick, and he's not even really an inspection coordinator, but they talk to him anyways. On the positive side, one of the great things about my job is that the owner is really good. He and his son do a Manager's Corner in our newsletter every month where they help teach us things we may not know. There's always stuff you can learn about the business of construction - it's a pretty big business and there's a lot that goes on with it. They like to make sure that everybody gets trained up on things, and they will provide any kind of training, even outside of that, if you want to train on different things. They have different platforms that they can set up for you, so that's a really good thing with my job - they do like to help you with your training.

Definitely family - that's the most important value to me. And loyalty. A lot of jobs say, oh, we're all family here, but we really are at my company. We've all worked there for a pretty long time. Myself and another co-worker have been with the owner the longest, so we really are kind of like family. We've stuck it through - I've been there with him through the ups and downs. My job really takes family seriously. Like I said before, my mom needed a liver transplant, and they helped me to get all of the things in place so that I could take off when she got the transplant, so I could be there for her, help her recover and everything. They kept her in their thoughts all the time and helped me to feel better about my position, and that I wasn't going to lose my position for having to be out of work so much when she was going through that.