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Career Day at Girls At Work sparks a current of possibilities
Roberta Baker, The New Hampshire Union Leader, Manchester
5 min read
May 3—MANCHESTER — Career Day at Girls at Work was a carnival of opportunities for young women — some known, others surprising and awe-inspiring.
Consider the unexpected occupation of Lisa Duval, a line worker for Eversource, who spent six years above ground fixing and stringing power lines before becoming a trainer for one of the state's major power companies. To demonstrate the currents she works with, Duval fried a hot dog on a metal prong with 7,600 volts of electricity running through it — the juice in a power line maintained by Eversource workers in buckets above the road.
"We're dealing with heights, high voltage, the weather, and sometimes long hours in storm situations," said Duval, who studied line work at Manchester Community College, took her first job as a meter reader, then followed in her father's footsteps as a line worker. The career, she said, appeals to girls intrigued by STEM who want to work outdoors and be well paid.
The incinerated frankfurter — an outside demonstration in the parking lot — sparked instant interest as well as some gasps and low-voltage screams from girls who came Wednesday from high schools and charter schools in Manchester and Goffstown.
"It electrocutes the hot dog. It turns black, heats up, and some falls off," said Duval. "We talked about what it takes to be safe. It's a non-traditional role for a female," but there's a clear and proven path.
The two-day girls-only job fair Tuesday and Wednesday attracted 22 businesses and nearly 200 girls over two days, offering exposure to careers many of them never consider.
Inside the Girls at Work warehouse at 200 Bedford St., a table featured mini-marshmallows, toothpicks, a bowl of candy bars and two bricks. The challenge was sweet: Build a bridge across bricks from marshmallows and toothpicks, one that will support as many candy bars as you can load on safely. Then take them home to eat.
Rebecca Brown, a land development group and senior project manager for GPI in Bedford, stood by to officiate an engineering activity that attracted interest.
"They'll ask questions about what we do for our work and how they can become an engineer," said Brown, who does traffic studies and transportation planning for GPI in Bedford including advising schools on how to create safe routes for biking and walking to cut down on parent drop-offs, which cause traffic jams and delays.
GPI, with offices in Salem and Portsmouth, also builds and repairs bridges with underwater divers on staff to inspect bridge supports. Its New England workforce is split 50-50 male and female, with women in almost every role except construction inspection. There are jobs for women in construction management, drafting, 3-D modeling, engineering and surveying and other facets of civil engineering.
"We need people to go out and survey the land so we know what it looks like," Brown said.
Organized last year by Kaylee Richard, a junior at Memorial High School, and Samantha Grenier, a sophomore at Goffstown High, Girls at Work's second annual Career Day was designed to plant seeds of possibility in non-traditional careers often overlooked by girls, who can be tracked into society's pre-determined niches.
"This gives girls a safe environment to explore careers they weren't sure were available to them," Grenier said. "To see these represented by women is so important."
Elaine Hamel is founder and executive director of Girls at Work, which teaches girls how to use power tools to build things, including their confidence and self-esteem. The fair was intended to be an eye-opening debunker of gender role stereotypes as well as introductory positive exposure that gets girls thinking outside the box.
"You know the line, 'The future is female?' Girls need to know what a future looks like," said Hamel. "Kids leave here saying, 'This is the coolest thing. There are so many jobs I want to do.'"
Felicite Veach, a 10th-grader at Goffstown High School, said she came to get ideas and find something she might like. "I'm iffy about jobs. I want something fun and outdoors. At one point I was thinking about firefighting."
For a while, Katelyn Riley, a sophomore at Goffstown, was considering teaching because she likes working with people, including children. She came "just to open myself up to new options to see what piques my interest."
Riley and Veach viewed an electronic pipe-fitting demonstration by Kayla Johnson, a welder, who works for Decco, a mechanical contractor that builds big process piping systems for pharmaceutical companies. COVID brought a slew of jobs building clean rooms for vaccine manufacturers including Pfizer and Moderna.
Johnson thought she wanted to be a nurse and discovered she didn't like it while studying nursing at a technical high school in Massachusetts. With her mom's encouragement she got into welding, one of several alternatives she identified. Johnson is now a full-time welder with a journeyman license for pipe welding, one of four female welders in a company that employs 165.
"We build things for companies that make life-saving drugs," she said. "When you get to the end of a project and say, 'Wow, we built all of that.' It's really rewarding."
Rajesh Nair, of Nashua, founder CEO of EnCube Labs, brought his company's software Zero2Maker, which teaches 3D printing, electronics and computer-assisted design, and challenges students to solve a problem. It's about instilling a confidence mindset early. Girls represent less than 1% of technology workers, he said.
"How do you turn on switches in their heads to say, 'I can learn technology. I can do it on my own? Your fears calcify in your mid-teenage years. We're leaving behind a lot of kids who are not working to their potential. It's harder to get them to believe once they believe they cannot."
When presenting to students in Manchester and visiting schools in India, he tells kids, "Anything that anyone else has created you can learn. You're absolutely a smart person."
