To wrap up Women’s History Month, Central New Mexico Community College is holding its annual ‘Women in Trades Summit’ this Saturday.
Trades are historically male-dominated fields, but CNM is working to change that narrative.
The community college launched the Women in Trades Summit four years ago. This year, the event is joining forces with the SkillsUSA conference, a competition to showcase career skills in trades in the state.
At the conference, 509 female competitors will be demonstrating their talents in trade work. The Women in Trades Summit will take place on the last day of the conference, and will offer opportunities for job seekers to meet potential future employers.
Joy Forehand is vice president for Workforce and Community Success at CNM. She is overseeing the event in her first year in this position.
“Women in Trades is such an invaluable event, because it really helps us continue increasing awareness amongst women that all of these career opportunities are available to them,” Forehand said.
This year’s summit will be held on a Saturday, which differs from years past. Forehand says having the summit on a weekend means more people who work on weekdays can attend.
Jewel Kieser is a recent graduate of the bench jewelry trade program at CNM. She says it changed her life.
“It felt really empowering to learn how to use, you know, fire, to manipulate metals and to work with all of these dangerous spinning tools and be able to create something that is considered beautiful out of a material that is the epitome of hard and rough,” Kieser said.
Kieser now has a full-time job working as a bench jeweler at a small business in Albuquerque. She says the summit helps women think about new opportunities.
“It's really important to have spaces where we are introduced to things that we didn't know exist,” Kieser said.
The summit will feature information about careers in industrial automation, HVAC, plumbing, culinary arts and more.
In 2013, only 7% of people enrolled in trade programs at CNM were women. As of this year, that number has jumped to 14%, and the summit will have information on financial aid and enrollment to potentially increase that number.
