Lindsay Blair
I’ve spent my entire 13-year career in the building industry, with the last decade focused on learning and development. My path into the industry wasn’t exactly planned. While attending college full-time, I helped support my family’s businesses—my dad has been a builder my entire life, and my mom owned a catering company, where I worked part-time events.
One of those events turned out to be a customer workshop for a well-known company in the building industry. While waitressing the event, someone (who eventually became a colleague and someone I still truly admire) encouraged me to apply for a position at their local campus. At the time, I was planning to become a teacher, so it wasn’t the trajectory I expected—but I applied and began my career in customer service shortly after graduating college.
It didn’t take long for me to realize that what I truly enjoyed was teaching others how to succeed in their roles. Even early in my career, I was given the opportunity to design and lead an onboarding and training program for customer service representatives, a role I held for four to five years. From there, I transitioned into developing soft skills and professional development programs for the broader organization, eventually building those efforts into a full learning and development department.
In January, I accepted a new opportunity to work again with a CEO I deeply respect from a previous organization. His leadership and vision made the decision an easy one when the opportunity arose. Today, I am building a training and education department from the ground up. I am focused on product education and am working at folding in soft skills and leadership development wherever appropriate—bringing together everything I’ve done previously into one role, which has been incredibly rewarding.
Currently, I oversee the development of customer-facing product education programs, including workshops hosted at our Waco Training Facility. I design curriculum, presentations, process flows, standards, and expectations for these programs while also developing internal education initiatives such as presentation skills training and structured product knowledge learning. A major focus of my work is creating standardized, accessible continuing education opportunities that support different learning styles and make complex information more digestible for employees.
My role is highly dynamic—at the moment, it’s a team of one—so my days are full and varied. I take my career incredibly serious but try to always balance my other roles being a mother and a wife. So having a career that supports all the hats I wear is incredible. I split my time between remote work and travel to our Waco facility, roughly an 80/20 balance.
• Thomas International Certified Analyst for behavioral assessments
• Bachelor's degree in Cultural Anthropology from SUNY Plattsburgh
What do you attribute your success to?
I believe my career success comes from a true potpourri of influences and experiences that have shaped who I am professionally and personally. Growing up with extremely determined, hardworking parents who owned their own businesses taught me early on the value of resilience, accountability, and showing up every day ready to work. Watching them navigate both challenges and successes instilled a strong work ethic and an appreciation for perseverance.
Surviving childhood cancer was another defining chapter in my life. That experience fundamentally changed my perspective at a young age— it strengthened my resilience, deepened my gratitude, and reminded me not to take opportunities or people for granted. It gave me a sense of purpose and urgency to make meaningful contributions in the work I do.
Having grown up around the building industry also gave me an understanding of its natural ebbs and flows. I learned early that success in this field requires adaptability, patience, and a long-term mindset.
Equally important are the colleagues, mentors, and leaders who supported me along the way — the people who believed in me, encouraged me, and sometimes saw my potential more clearly than I did myself. Their confidence and encouragement helped me continue growing, especially during moments when my own confidence wavered.
Ultimately, my success is the result of hard work, perspective gained through life experiences, industry understanding, and the incredible people who have championed me throughout my journey.
What’s the best career advice you’ve ever received?
Ironically, the best career advice I’ve ever received is something my parents told me repeatedly while I was growing up. It was meant as guidance for my personal character and reputation, but it has proven to be just as relevant to my professional life.
They always told me, “Never do anything that would make you have to duck your head in the grocery store.” In other words, live and work in a way that allows you to be proud of your actions, your decisions, and how you treat people.
That advice has stayed with me throughout my career. Reputation, integrity, and accountability follow you everywhere — long after any single job, title, or accomplishment. I’ve tried to build a career where I can stand confidently behind my work, knowing I’ve done the right thing even when no one was watching.
What advice would you give to young women entering your industry?
In construction and the building trades, respect comes from knowledge and consistency. Learn the products, understand the processes, ask questions, and never stop learning. Skill speaks louder than stereotypes. You are not a guest in this industry, you are a professional bringing value. Confidence doesn’t mean knowing everything; it means trusting that you can learn anything.
What are the biggest challenges or opportunities in your field right now?
I believe one of the biggest challenges in our industry — especially on the customer-facing training and education side — is time.
Our customers are incredibly busy professionals. Every hour they spend attending a training or educational event is time they could otherwise be on a jobsite earning income. Because of that, participation isn’t something we should ever take for granted.
When someone chooses to attend one of our programs, it’s truly a privilege. They’re trusting us with their time, and that means we have a responsibility to make every minute valuable, practical, and worth the investment. Training can’t just be informative — it has to be relevant, efficient, and immediately applicable to their work.
The challenge, and the opportunity, is ensuring that what we deliver respects their time while genuinely helping them become more successful in the field.
What values are most important to you in your work and personal life?
Some of the most important values guiding both my professional and personal life are reliability, passion, and dedication.
I firmly believe that your personal brand and your professional brand are inseparable. How you show up, how you treat people, and the standards you hold yourself to don’t change depending on the setting; they are bound together. Remembering that as I move through my career helps keep my core values grounded and consistent.
For me, success isn’t just about accomplishments — it’s about being dependable, bringing genuine passion to the work, staying dedicated to continuous growth, and lifting others up along the way.