Bobby Lewis: The wide receiver finds success off-field, too
When 54 year old Hoffman Construction laborer foreman Bobby Lewis thinks about advice for young people of color entering the construction trades, he thinks of fortitude, enthusiasm. “You’ve got to want to be here,” he says on the day we interview him. “I think I’ve told a number of people that.”
It’s clear from watching the good-natured, easygoing Lewis go about his own duties that he enjoys his work. On the Intel building site that Hoffman is developing in Beaverton, he oversees a crew of six who are in charge of taking care of their coworkers’ well being – stocking first aid stations, making sure that there’s ample water supply for workers laboring under the hot summer sun. “Laborers are the backbone of this whole operation,” he smiles.
But having begun his career in the construction trades almost two decades ago, Lewis knows it’s not always that easy for men of color to get a hold in the industry. “When I got started, it was tough for a black male. You have to work harder than anyone else. You had to be sure of what you’re doing.” Nowadays, he’d like to see more minorities on building sites. “I don’t know why I don’t,” he reflects.
Lewis worked his first building construction job at age 35 at the US Federal Courthouse in Portland. Before that, the Portland-raised University of Washington wide receiver, who dropped out when he hurt his back and his girlfriend got pregnant, had a variety of gigs. He worked at the rail yard (like his dad before him), as a loan officer (“That’s a hard job to do, because what you’re doing to people isn’t fair”), and as a Laborer at the shipyards.
At each step of the way, he says he felt a little nervous – but dove right into expanding his skill set. On the shipyards, “I was a little nervous, a little scared, not knowing what to expect.” That first day at the US Federal Courthouse, he was stumped when foreman Mike Delgado (who is still Lewis’ supervisor and mentor) asked him what a MSDS was. “I didn’t know!” Lewis says in mock horror remembering that day. For aspiring Laborers, psst – the acronym stands for Material Safety Data Sheet.
The steep learning curve of the trades, Lewis says, is more than worth navigating. “I’ve been able to support my family.” He takes trips to the coast with granddaughter Natalia in the family’s own trailer, one of the many items he’s been able to buy on his union paycheck.
His friendly, capable manner has also meant he’s been able to get promotions that showcase his leadership skills. Though he was initially reluctant to become a foreman, now he enjoys the position. “I like delegating. I like seeing ahead to what needs to be done, staying a step ahead of everything.”
“A good leader is someone who can listen to their crew,” he tells us. “Someone who can take suggestions. Not try to intimidate, dominate situations.” Clearly, his years on field taught him some things about teamwork.
And so, despite challenges, Lewis recommends the trades to anyone who has considered their options and thinks they’re up to the job. He will often say as much to young people he meets out in the world, such as stopping to advise the security guards he passes at work on his way to clock in. “Work hard,” he advises. “Be caring. Listen. Get to work on time. Be sure of yourself.”
Katie Kost: Graduating to a New Level of Leadership
Anyone who thinks that major construction sites are no place for a woman to spend her professional life should talk to Hoffman Construction Material Manager and Laborer Foreman Katie Kost. She’s found a unique job in the building trades that fits the arsenal of skills she gained in college and in various jobs. Plus, it’s meshed well with her life outside of work. Kost was on the job up until two weeks prior to giving birth to her baby last year.
Not to say that life has been free of challenges. “You have to have tough skin,” says Kost. As a female, “you just have to work hard. It’s not an easy trade. But for me, who has been to college, and wanted to do sports marketing, it’s been great.”
After earning extra money by delivering Domino’s pizzas for $7/hour, Kost graduated from Barlow High School at 18 as a star volleyball player. She received a full ride from North Carolina State to play her sport. She wound up transferring to Portland State her senior year, and left that school with her degree in business management.
After college, Kost wound up working at Lowe’s, then doing inventory at a wholesale auto dealer. She became close friends with a surveyor who had ties to Hoffman Construction, and through the strength of her inventory managing experience, Kost got her first job in that area with the company in 2005.
But Duane Meduna, a Hoffman Superintendent, was impressed by what he saw, and invited Kost to step into the “hybrid job” (as Kost puts it) of Materials Manager/Laborer Foreman. For the position, Kost spends time in the Hoffman offices, but also out on building sites, advising workers on how to keep track of expensive supplies. She’s worked on the concrete crews as well, she says, to get a hands-on feel for the work.
Before Kost got on the job, she says, losses in materials per job could sometimes total $200,000. She’s been able to keep that figure down to $1,000, as was the case when Hoffman worked on Portland’s Cyan Building. “I would say that’s when I gained the most respect,” Kost says, looking back on that project. “She’s a very important part of the job,” affirms Meduna. “When no one is in her position, the guys slowly stop taking care of business”, he says.
One challenge in her position is getting people to recognize her authority as a young woman. “It took a year or two before they’d really listen or respect me,” she says – many of the people whose work she oversees are many decades her senior. “I’ve learned that you just need to put your foot down,” she reflects when we ask her the secret to gaining respect on the job.
But Kost’s capability is undeniable. She’s praised for her attention to detail, and the precision with which she does her work — her value to the company is well established. Plus, she’d have a hard time going back to a desk job. “I really like being in different places all day, not just sitting behind my computer.”
Cory Naranjo: A Good Fit for Foreman
“If I wasn’t in the trades?” General Foreman Cory Naranjo considers the question as the walkie-talkie affixed to his vest crackles to life. He’s stumped. “I never really considered it,” he concludes. “I’d probably be working an office job, hating life.” Laughter.
It’s true that Naranjo does seem incredibly suited to his leadership role at Hoffman Construction. He is currently working at the Intel building site Hoffman Construction has been developing in Beaverton and he has spent his entire career in construction at this very company, starting as a Carpenter Apprentice. “I guess that’s a big accomplishment,” he reflects somewhat modestly.
Naranjo had plenty of options when it came to jobs. He got good grades in high school, started working early, at 15 when he did a turn on a summer work crew for the city of Woodland, Washington, where he grew up with his dad, who worked for Weyerhaeuser (and who moved here from Jalisco, Mexico) and mom (who has Italian heritage) who is a registered nurse.
That first summer, he worked at flagging, cleanup, and weeding around the city. But in 2000, when he graduated high school, he was put to work right away in a leadership position as a lead man at General Steel loading trucks.
“It was a lot of responsibility,” he recalls. Maybe that’s why, when he started dating his now-wife Kathleen and her father-in-law impressed upon him the earning potential and the benefits that could be gained from a career in the trades, he reconsidered his plans for higher education. In 2001, he joined a carpentry apprenticeship program at Hoffman.
“I was green – it was interesting,” he says lightly. “You don’t know what you’re getting into until you’re out there doing it. You’re working in all kinds of weather and elements as opposed to sitting in an office all week long.” He learned lots of skills in residential and house building, a big contrast from the large-scale work he’s engaged in when we catch up with him at Intel.
“Hoffman is a good company,” Naranjo says. “We’re like family here. Everyone’s mellow, takes into consideration what’s going on.” He counts as his biggest accomplishment his quick rise to Foreman with the company – his first job as a lead he spent learning alongside Amos Austinson, now working as a Field Superintendent, who Cory credits with teaching him a lot of what he knows. Naranjo’s first turn as foreman he spent working with his friend and teacher on the Waterfront Pearl condos in downtown Portland.
How did Naranjo manage his relatively quick rise up the building trades ladder? He reckons it has to do with being a hard worker and that, “a good leader has to be knowledgeable, willing to listen to the group of workers that you got, willing to admit when you’ve made a mistake.” Now his goal is to be a Superintendent like Austinson.
When asked if he has ever experienced challenges on the job as a man with Latino heritage, Naranjo shrugs. Not personally, he says – though he has seen the obstacles that can come to those for whom English is not their first language. “People kind of get aggravated, and it can play a role in who gets hired.”
But now that Naranjo is a father – Christopher was born to the couple in 2002, with Lily and Olivia quick to follow – the benefits of being in the trades are clear. “I was able to purchase a house when I was 21,” he tells us. His wife is able to be a stay-at-home mom, which he’s proud of. “We have a pretty nice lifestyle – the benefits of hard work pays.”
Dao Dang: Building a life in this country by building skyscrapers
To see Dao Dang today, striding around the Building Module 2 Intel site, coordinating a team of carpenters for his longtime employers Hoffman Construction, you would never guess that the man moved here from Central Vietnam at age 18 not knowing a word of English. But once you do have an idea of what it took for him to get to where he is today, Dang’s leadership role on his worksite seems even more admirable.
After Dang moved to Oregon with his father and brother, he took a janitorial job at the Oregon Zoo. After 3 months, he enrolled in a Job Corps carpentry program and learned both English and carpentry at Timer Lake Job Corps Center.
He spent his time alternating between one week of educational program offerings, one week learning vocational skills. He was attracted to working with wood and had done similar jobs during his youth in Vietnam, where one of the first places he worked was with his grandmother in the family’s malt grain business.
His most pronounced memory from those early days in this country? “You see a lot of high-rise buildings here,” he tells us. Perhaps it’s no coincidence that today, Dang plays a vital role in making those structures soar.
At 21, Dang followed his interest in carpentry into an official apprenticeship program. “My first reason was money,” the 39 year old tells us. “The next was that I really like the job.” His apprenticeship took him to various companies, and finally at Van Lom Concrete he became a journey-level Carpenter.
Six years after he started his apprenticeship, Dang arrived at Hoffman Structures. “They treat you nice here,” he says. “They provide you all the materials you want. And safety is number one for them.” In another six years he had become a foreman. “I had been there long enough,” he explains when we ask him what his company’s motivation behind promoting him was. “They thought that I knew everything I needed to know.”
Now that he’s a jobsite leader, Dang has gotten used to the duties of being a foreman. “I like being able to show people how to do things, to help.” His paycheck is now substantial enough to support his family: his wife of seven years Mong Chinh and their two sons.
The only drawback of his success may be how much time he finds himself investing on a mental level. “On a job site, you start stressing a lot. You go home to your wife and kids and it can be hard to focus on family life.”
Though he rarely works with other Vietnamese people on the job, Dang says he’s never been challenged in the workplace on the basis of ethnicity. He would, however, like to see more Vietnamese in the building trades, and ventures that there could be more resources for those who were looking at entering the industry.
“Find the trade you like and take the opportunity,” he counsels those looking for the same kind of success that he’s found in his career. The hard work is worth it. “My life would be more difficult if I wasn’t doing this. You make a better living in the trades.”
Danielle Zoller-McKenzie: Iron in the Blood
Danielle Zoller-McKenzie has union Ironworking in her blood — she grew up with a dad, brother, cousins and uncles in the trade. But while her family didn’t discourage her from pursuing work in their field, she wasn’t exactly encouraged to try it, either. “They thought I was going to be too small,” she says.
But a summer job as a hodcarrier – or “hoddie”, as she was dubbed by the masons she worked with convinced her she was more than up to the task. “The camaraderie is what I really liked,” she told us. “My brother worked there too. To be a woman and a hard worker is a different kind of feeling than you get than just being a ‘woman worker.’ The praise you get from working really hard, it’s just a big deal.”
After graduating high school, she worked in the shipyards, confirming her love of working in the trades. She applied to the Ironworkers apprenticeship program, and after a year of waiting – somewhat impatiently, she adds — she was in the door.
“I knew when I got into this trade that it’s a man’s world,” Zoller-McKenzie says. She was treated differently by coworkers, held to a different standard. Everyone in the program could see the double standard, but she opted to focus all the more intently on her work in the face of adversity. “It’s always paid off for me to take the high road,” she says. “Although that may not be my first instinct.”
Zoller-McKenzie started her career back in 1998 working on bridges and rebar projects. After two years, she came to Carr Construction, and has worked for the same company ever since, drawing on an enduring network of supportive co-workers rather than surfing from job to job. She says she values security over novelty: “I’d rather wait out the slow times.”
In 2000 as an apprentice, she became eligible to start work on her welding certification and passed the initial training in only three weeks. She pressed on, getting incremental raises and working hard as a “grunt,” as she puts it. She passed her journeyman’s trade certification in 2002 and has since advanced to her current role as superintendent. Through the years she took a number of OSHA classes and is now starting to teach apprenticeship training classes herself.
“I got lucky as a female,” says Zoller-McKenzie. “Because I did make friends and they took me under their wing.” (Continuing in the tradition of paying it forward, she’d like aspiring Ironworkers to know there’s now a smart phone app to aide with the math-heavy art of angle finding. Yes, it’s called Angle Finder.)
Her work has afforded Zoller-McKenzie some memorable times. She’s had a one and a half day welding assignment turn into a gig that lasted over a year, and a job in Terrebonne, Oregon for which she got to do her work 150 feet off of the ground.
The job is not without its downsides – Zoller-McKenzie says the weight of working outside in all weather conditions is getting hard to bear as her body ages. And she says she’s had to sacrifice any semblance of a “normal” family life: “The crazy schedule of this job demands pretty much 15 hours a day.”
But she likes this work. Zoller-McKenzie’s career path has taken her from journey-level worker to crew supervisor — nowadays she also performs crew foreman duties as needed, delegating tasks and being responsible for safety compliance.
She’s proud of what she does. She makes good money and, as she tells us in our interview “the kind of fun you can have on a job is unbelievable.” Looking forward, she has plans to pursue her OSHA safety supervisor certification, and would love to work as an engineer for that agency one day.
This multi-generation Ironworker’s advice to new female tradeswomen? “There’s always going to be some guy who will blow you off because they don’t believe women should be in this job. Have a thick skin. Accept what is, and find the positives.”
Dan Rodriguez: A heavy equipment operator who lives lightly
Dan Rodriguez says he’s pretty happy having spent the past 23 years being, as he likes to call it, “a dirt hand.” After meeting the guy, you tend to believe him – he’s led quite a life mastering the art of operating heavy equipment.
The expert dozer and scraper operator has his father to thank for his well-suited career – his dad suggested Rodriguez sign up with Local 701 Operating Engineer Union for heavy equipment operator training decades ago, after Rodriguez had spent his first five post-high school years indoors at a machinist shop.
“I learned I actually liked the smell of diesel engines and working with dirt,” the Klamath Falls native tells us.
Young Rodriguez moved to Eugene for his first trainings with Operating Engineers Local 701 – the first journey in a career that would bring a lot of traveling for the small town boy. A short time later, he wound up moving again. This time, it was to Boardman, Oregon, where he completed his pre-apprenticeship training. At the time, Rodriguez was working as an oiler. (It was several years before he “got into the seat.”)
Those first few days in Boardman, Rodriguez realized that education would be an ongoing process in this line of work. “They put me on a job where I was responsible for maintaining and greasing the plant and the equipment,” he says. “I had to figure out so much that at first, it took me 19 hours to get it all done. But I stuck with it, and later I was able to complete all the work in six hours.”
After putting in time as a crane oiler at Bonneville Dam, Rodriguez went to work for Kiewit Construction, where he spent 15 years. It took him six or seven years to complete his apprenticeship there, but he didn’t mind – the important thing was that he was staying busy. Three mentors took him under their wing and made sure he was consistently employed and accumulating new experience. They kept moving him from job to job and place to place, picking up new skills as he went along.
Those kinds of valuable connections with coworkers, Rodriguez learned, meant a lot when jobs lead to days and weeks away from home, staying in temporary living arrangements that afford you moments to really connect with your fellow workers.
“We get to talking, and, of course, we can’t help it,” Rodriguez reflects on these off-the-clock moments. “Pretty soon, we’re talking about this or that about our jobs. That’s been a great way to learn.” His work has led him to bunk down in a Lakeview, Oregon “man camp”, his own motor home for many years, in Astoria, and eventually, in Hawaii for a lifechanging three-year stint.
There’s something to be said for island living. “In Hawaii, I really learned a lot about working with people from many different cultures,” says Rodriguez. “It was a real adjustment getting used to the pace of work and life there.” He learned that he could “chill out a little” and still get his work accomplished, sans stress.
During his career, Rodriguez has moved from oiler to operator to crew chief to foreman – he’ll take the lead job when it’s requested — but he prefers “being in the seat.” “There is more to life than just working all the time,” says a man who prefers to spend his off hours with his girlfriend and her child over worrying about his career.
“Travel is a part of the life,” Rodriguez likes to say. His ability to adapt to new ways of doing things continues to serve him well in his professional life. “Each company has a different culture, too” he says. “For instance, one place really put a high value on keeping the equipment and vehicles clean and maintained. But at another outfit, they didn’t expect you to spend your time on much of that. They just assumed you’d be pretty rough on the equipment if you were really getting out there and working hard on your job.”
There is one consistent priority — safety. “You learn about safety every day,” he says. “Especially when people are operating big machines alongside of you, right next to your feet.” Rodriguez should know – he’s logged 25,000 workplace hours without an accident, advising new workers to be cautious because it can be easy to misjudge hazards when operating heavy equipment.
Advice to new workers from an old dirt hand? “Help others and along the way, never forget where you came from – that you were new once and everybody is always learning something.” Rodriguez adds his bottom line with a smile: “do the best job you can, but it’s okay to chill out a little too.”
Meet Renee Beaudoin, Apprentice Carpenter
One of the first projects that Portland’s Renee Beaudoin got involved in after graduating from Oregon Tradeswomen, Inc.’s (OTI) Trades and Apprenticeship Career Class (TACC) in 2011 was making phone calls to U.S. legislators. She was part of a team urging Senators and Congresspeople to support hiring women and people of color to work on the Edith Green-Wendell Wyatt Federal Building modernization project.
She chuckles at the memory: “And then I ended up working here – kind of funny.”
It’s also a kind of linking of eras. One of the building’s namesakes, the late Oregon Congresswoman Edith Green, may be best known for Title IX, the part of the 1972 Higher Education Act that prohibited federally funded colleges and universities from discriminating against women. Title IX also opened the doors for girls to attend “shop” classes.
In high school, though, Renee was on a track toward healthcare. “I thought I wanted to do nursing or something like that,” she says. “I went through the whole health occupational program at Benson High School, but I didn’t ever look for any type of job in the healthcare industry.” Renee didn’t discover the trades until later, when she was serving a prison sentence and learned about OTI’s TACC program.
Now Renee is one of hundreds of tradespeople working on the modernization project, which will make the Edith Green-Wendell Wyatt building only the fifth LEED-certified federal building in the country. LEED stands for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design and the certification, developed by the U.S. Green Building Council, focuses on the design, construction and operation of high performance green buildings, homes and neighborhoods. This effort is classified as a federal “mega project” because the budget is over $50 million, its impact on the economy, the community, and its duration of more than two years. “It’s good to be part of the team. I look around and I see other women,” Renee says. “I feel really proud – I wish there were more (women on the project).”
In the program Renee is part of, a worker advances to the next level, or “term”, after 750 hours on the job, as a member of the carpenters union, Renee’s career is just getting started – and she loves it. “I’m excited that I’m going to be learning,” she says. “I’m just now at the very beginning of my career. Even my boss, who has been at it for 20 years now, says ‘I still learn something new every day.'”
Learning new things seems to come naturally to Renee. Once she found out about OTI, she was set to go. “I was really focused and knew exactly what I wanted to do,” she says. “But I didn’t know about the union or anything until I went through OTI’s TACC program.”
Renee is earning approximately the same weekly wage she was earning at her last job, working retail at a mall, but she is a lot happier. “Plus, I know I’m going to be moving up (in pay grade),” she says. Journey-level carpenters can make up to $32.00 an hour.
Renee added, “At the end of the day I can look back at all the work that I did for the day. And it’s like, cool, look at what I did!”
Meet AJ Banuelos, Laborer
AJ Banuelos, Laborer
AJ Banuelos is a woman on a mission: She is determined to succeed both as a worker and as a mother, and is forth-coming on both topics. She laid out her life plan while tending her two sons one sunny May afternoon.
Growing up along the West Coast, from Seattle to Southern California, AJ finally settled in Portland. She graduated from high school and took some college courses, despite having her first child, a special-needs daughter, at age 18. Her early career involved office and clerical work, but AJ descends from a long line of union-oriented construction workers, “Construction chose me,” she says. She soon recognized that union construction work pays from 2 to 3 times more than clerical. She had gotten as far as certifying and working as a flagger – hazardous work – before she began training at Oregon Tradeswomen Inc. in January 2011, subsequently achieving union apprenticeship.
AJ took up the family trade but with a twist. Everyone else in the family entered building construction; AJ is a member of Laborer’s International Union of North America, Local 320-Roadway and Highway. She moves earth on rail crews, grading and elevating rail. Why? “Because roads and bridges nearly always need repair and building, whereas building construction stops and starts.” The only downside she sees is weather. Despite the fact that AJ is not working currently she has a positive view both of the path she’s chosen and of her future.
Of her decision to apply to OTI and the outcome, she can summarize it in one word: “Awesome!” Her class of 42 was record-sized. The women both challenged and assisted each other and many of them still communicate. AJ continues to volunteer with OTI because she likes the idea of women helping women.
AJ is rightly proud of what she’s learned on the job: Her favorite story from the rail crew shows a lot of ambition. She said she noticed that the foreman would be holding tools, so she would say to him, “you shouldn’t be doing the work.” Then he would teach her how to use that tool. She gained a lot of training through observation. Nonetheless, her proudest work-related accomplishment is becoming a union member.
Family life sounds hectic but organized. On work days she gets herself and the kids ready to go, takes them to school/care and herself to work, always 20 minutes early. Her shift was 7:00 am to 3:30 pm. After work she picks them all up for scouts, football, church, union meetings, and OTI meetings, depending on the night. She is very particular about her children’s activities and television viewing habits, making decisions that will help them grow in mind and body.
She looks to the future: AJ hopes to become a union delegate and attend regional and national conferences. To those who scoff at the idea of women in trades she says, “You haven’t met US!” To other women she advises, “Consider all options; don’t rule out anything.”
AJ’s two year old gets fussy and she scoops him up and pops a berry she’s prepared into his mouth, never missing a beat. “I want my children to be happy and successful,” she says, “to do what their hearts desire and to be satisfied with their decisions.” They surely will be if they follow their mother’s advice: Know the difference between need and want. Don’t want what you can’t have; don’t do something just because you want to; don’t go anywhere just because you want to. Be happy with what you get by working for your goals. Sounds like a recipe for success.
Welcome to the OTI Blog
Welcome to the Oregon Tradeswomen, Inc. Blog, made possible through generous funding from the Oregon Department of Transportation (ODOT). This blog will tell the stories, successes and challenges of women working in the highway construction trades in Oregon. We welcome and encourage your feedback in the comments section and hope that these stories will start conversations, provide you with some advice and perhaps event entertain you.
Stay tuned for profiles of tradeswomen in Oregon, coming soon!