Carpenter
OTI Alumnae Spotlight: Meet Eleni Vournas!
Change seems to be a powerful constant in Eleni Vournas’ life. Originally from Honduras, she was adopted at a young age by a Greek/ American family and spent a few years on a ranch in Montana. When she was four years old, her family moved to Kalamata, Greece, where she spent the rest of her childhood and adolescence. It was in Greece where her passion for traveling was cemented. At twenty years old, after completing two years of computer programming college course work at the University of Piraeus, Eleni decided to move back to the United States to restart her degree. Four years later she graduated from University of Portland with a major in Mathematics and a minor in Psychology.
Following graduation, Eleni went to Haiti to volunteer for 16 months. While living there, she worked on many construction projects and quickly fell in love with carpentry. It was her goal to continue in the construction field when she returned to Portland, but to her dismay, she found it was nearly impossible for a young woman to find work in the field with the level of experience she had. Given this barrier, Eleni chose to pursue a career that would allow her to use her degree in Psychology. She began working at a local non-profit as a Pediatric Psychiatric Technician; she was paid $11.83 an hour at this job. Though Eleni enjoyed aspects of her job, she found herself getting burned out and still dreaming about a job in the construction field that would allow her to continue to fund her passion for traveling.
A couple years ago, when Eleni was 27 years old, her aunt sent her a newspaper article in The Oregonian about Oregon Tradeswomen, Inc. (OTI). After learning about the pre-apprenticeship program offered by OTI she immediately enrolled and has never looked back! Eleni graduated from the Trades and Apprenticeships Career Class with perfect attendance, high praise from her instructors and peers, and was also asked to be the student speaker at her graduation. She was honored to receive this recognition and enthusiastically organized a flash mob with her peers – to the delight of the OTI instructors, friends and family in attendance!
Today, just two years after graduating from OTI’s pre-apprenticeship class, Eleni is 80% finished with her general carpenters apprenticeship and is now making $29.25 an hour — more than double the highest wage she made, with a college degree, before entering the trades. Eleni works for Hoffman Structures Inc. on an exciting new project at the campus of Oregon Health and Sciences University. Eleni has also taken advantage of the free trainings she is able to access though her membership in the Northwest Carpenters Union and has completed a rigging certification, which she finds to be really exciting work.
For Eleni, OTI opened the door to the Carpenters Union, provided her information about all of her options, and also answered all of the questions she was struggling to answer on her own before enrolling in OTI’s program. Eleni was also given access to a support group of strong female instructors and peers who share a passion for work in the trades. She still keeps in contact with many of them today.
If Eleni could give advice to other women who are considering work in the trades, she would tell them that it is definitely worth trying! She believes that the tangible skills she learned while in the trades as well as the things she has discovered about herself are priceless. She also feels really proud to be representing OTI on the job because people in the industry know and respect the advocacy work OTI does to get women started in high-skilled trades careers.
From a practical point of view, she also believes that graduating from the Trades and Apprenticeships Career Class helped her get hired faster due to the legacy that OTI holds in the Portland Community.
In the future, Eleni plans to complete her apprenticeship to become a journey level
carpenter and would eventually like to move up to a foreman position. But, Eleni’s passion for traveling and her inspiring ability to take risks has not been tamped out. Eleni dreams of also pursuing a degree in the medical field and coupling that knowledge with her existing construction skills in order to bring much needed services to third world countries. We applaud her ambition and vision! For now, Eleni is loving her life as a member of the NW Carpenters Union and finds the work she does to be thrilling.
OTI Alumnae Spotlight: Meet Brooklyn Payne
“OTI gave me the tools, but I did the work!” – Brooklyn Payne
Brooklyn, third from the left, at the 2016 annual OTI Women in Trades Career Fair
Brooklyn grew up in Spokane, Washington. She has a fantastic adventurous spirit that led her to travel around the United States after high school as well as living in Costa Rica for an extended amount of time. After her travels, she moved to Portland to live near her mother and sister who had relocated to the Rose City while she while she was traveling.
Before starting Oregon Tradeswomen, Inc.’s (OTI) Trades and Apprenticeship Career Class (TACC), Brooklyn spent 12 years working as a bartender without benefits like health insurance that are a common perk in other careers. The highest hourly wage she made in the food and beverage industry was $9.75 an hour. Brooklyn also took college courses and accrued considerable student debt, but was unable to find the hands-on education she craved.
As Brooklyn entered into her 30’s she wanted a change: she recognized that bartending was a dead end for her and would not provide her with the means to retire some day. She heard about OTI from a friend who had also gone through the TACC program, and kept it in her mind. One day in 2014, she made the decision to commit to her future and officially enrolled in OTI’s pre-apprenticeship training program – she was 34 years old.
“OTI was pivotal for me, and has everything to do with where I am today.”
Just two years later, Brooklyn is now working for Hoffman Structures Inc. as an apprentice carpenter on an exciting new project for Oregon Health and Sciences University. Brooklyn is 80% through her apprenticeship and is currently making $29.75 per hour! She feels great leaving work every day knowing that she is able to take care of herself and that she earned it with hard work and dedication. When asked how OTI helped her get where she is today, she said, “OTI was pivotal for me, and has everything to do with where I am today.” OTI gave her tangible skills, unconditional support, and the confidence to find a career in a field she would not have considered otherwise. But, Brooklyn also recognizes that her own internal drive and motivation to invest in her future played an important role in where she is today: “OTI gave me the tools, but I did the work!”.
“OTI gave me the tools, but I did the work!”.
When asked what advice she would give to other women considering a career in the trades, she enthusiastically replied, “You can do it! It is possible!” She also wisely advised women to keep in mind that although female workers in the trades are still relatively uncommon, any doubts that might be experienced about entering this industry are no different from doubts that would be felt in pursuing any career or career transition. She loves being a woman on the construction site, and has found a sisterhood of support though the local carpenters union.
Future goals for Brooklyn include journeying out as a carpenter, becoming a foreman, and eventually working her way up to superintendent and she has unwavering confidence in her abilities to achieve these goals.
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!”