Her Story
About Mariah
I've been in construction for only 6 months, but the majority of my career has been in either operations or education. I was recruited to my current position as Executive Assistant to the founder and CEO at Edwards Construction Group. My boss has 4 businesses, and I help them across all four - construction is the majority of my day, but I also assist with businesses in the technology and drone field, as well as the software field. No day is typical for me. I can be doing very different things - today I'm interviewing for a private pilot since they're being hired privately, not through the company. I handle average tasks like scheduling and travel pretty consistently, but beyond that, every day is a little bit different. I work full-time in the office, and we have offices in San Diego and the Ventura/Oxnard area as well, so I do some traveling between those locations. I'm still kind of younger in my profession, but I have been here for quite a while. I had moved up to director position in my previous roles, and I'm on the way to chief of staff now.
Her Interview
Ten minutes with Mariah
01What advice would you give to young women entering your industry?
I would say just research, stay on top. There's so many companies out there that I just follow and kind of see trends. Procore, for example, is a software system used by a lot of companies, and they have a podcast out, they post just a lot of information on trends and things like that, resources. Looking at AGC, which is the American General Contractors Association, they have a ton of resources becoming a member there. DBIA is another option if they're interested in architecture and design. There are a lot of opportunities out there, and I say just seeing if there's internship opportunities. There's a lot of different positions within construction as well, so anyone's interested in that, you know, trying to figure out what path seems right. A lot of the roles kind of can interlink, so if you're able to get your foot in the door and see what a project engineer does, maybe you'll be working with PMs and CMs and things like that, and seeing what they do as well. That can kind of help you navigate which path to go down, or what your interest is.
02What are the biggest challenges or opportunities in your field right now?
I think just in my field in particular, construction is a very cyclical industry. It's just very volatile, and it's hard to plan ahead. You never know how a bid would go, or a job will go, just that there's so many variable factors. A lot of new automation tools are coming out, which for certain positions in construction, like project management, project executive, project engineer fields, some of that work we can see down the line could possibly be affected by that. Also with the owners who are completing the work, some of them are requesting different things, so like, design-build is coming up, progressive design-build. Certain things in the industry are kind of shifting to more progressive technology, so that is something we're on the lookout for, just kind of how that plays out in the construction industry. Construction is very male-dominated, so learning, you know, kind of navigating, like, getting respect from peers and things like that, and I'm new to the trade, so having to learn a lot.
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