Roofing Company Owner Discusses the Benefits of GAF's Roofing Academy

R3NG Roofing & Gutters Owner Lauren Morley speaks with us about their work with the GAF Roofing Academy and how they help combat the labor shortage.

Editor's note: The following is a transcript of a conversation between our Multimedia Manager Megan Ellsworth, and R3NG Roofing & Gutters Owner Lauren Morley.

Megan Ellsworth: Okay. So why don't we start by just having you introduce yourself, and what do you do? What's your company's name? All that jazz.

Lauren Morley: Yes. So I'm Lauren Morley. I'm one of the owners of R3NG, which is a low-slope commercial, multi-family residential roofing company out of Denver, Colorado.

Megan Ellsworth: Love it. And what's your role?

Lauren Morley: So I'm one of the owners, I run all of the day-to-day operations, and I'm the most involved with sales and marketing.

Megan Ellsworth: Okay, great. So you recently hosted a GAF Roofing Academy for women at your offices in Denver. What the process of getting that started like?

Lauren Morley: Yeah, that's a good question. So I only learned about the academy, the GAF Academy last year at Wealth Builder actually. And pretty quickly, Jason and I were like, "We really want to do that, it's really cool." So a little information about the academy itself, so GAF started this program back in 2019, it's a really cool program. Basically what they did was, they took their care team, which is who trains all of their contractors, and they created a division of it called the GAF Roofing Academy. They partner with their contractors all over the country, and depending on what that contractor is looking for in terms of labor, they will recruit from different non-profits or organizations, people who need a second chance getting back into the workforce. So whether it's former veterans, people who have been formally incarcerated, people who've been homeless, or have just lost their job for one reason or another. They recruit those people. All the roofer has to do is host the academy.

GAF comes in free of charge, and they train the people in whatever they want, low-slope roofing, steep-slope roofing, sales. They actually pay all the students to do the class, and they feed them breakfast and lunch. And then at the end of the class, the roofer has the chance to hire out of the class, and then GAF will help place them in other places. The point of the academy was to help contractors with the struggle of labor shortage.

Megan Ellsworth: That's awesome.

Lauren Morley: So really cool idea, so we go in, and we like to speak at the academy classes. They have me come in, and I speak to what it's working in the roofing industry, and what the different types of jobs are. So six months ago I went in, I spoke in a class, and I made a joke to the teacher, Danny McLaughlin, he said, "If you ever have a woman in one of your classes, let me know. I'll hire her." And he was like, "Why don't you just chose an all-women's class? I was like, "Oh yeah, sure. Why didn't I think of that?"

And I came back, and I told Jason, and Jason was like, "No, no, we should definitely do that." So that was the story of how the idea came to be. And then honestly, at that point, it was just logistics of getting with the academy to get the dates set. GAF does a lot of the front-end stuff, so they would create the flyer. I worked really closely with Danny, he actually lives here in Denver. He's one of the leads for the GAF Roofing Academy, and he helped me create all the content for the class.

Our class was different, 'cause we weren't doing it for us to hire, we wanted it to be an all-women's class. So we made it two weeks long. We covered everything, we covered low-slope, steep-slope, in-home sales, and coatings, and they do product knowledge, and hands-on demo knowledge. It was so much fun, and a lot of what I did was a lot of grassroots efforts to recruit. So I've reached out to a lot of our local non-profits. We worked a lot with the Gathering Place, we worked a lot with Chic Women's Workforce to fill the class of local women who were looking to get back in into the workforce.

Megan Ellsworth: Very cool.

Lauren Morley: And then from there it was just teaching it.

Megan Ellsworth:

Wow. So were those women that have experienced houselessness, or hardships at all?

Lauren Morley: Yeah, it was crazy getting to know the women over the course of the two weeks. I mean, there were some who had struggled with addiction, and had come out of rehab, and were sober, and trying to get back into the workforce. A lot of them had been incarcerated for one reason or another, and they were at halfway houses. I mean, I think out of our group, there was one woman who was homeless in the group, and about five who lived at halfway houses. And just crazy, because, I mean, I think out of those five, three of them already have jobs out of the academy.

Megan Ellsworth: Oh, that's great.

Lauren Morley: I know. Super cool.

Megan Ellsworth: Can you say where they're working?

Lauren Morley: Well, so Erica Gerard hired a woman who we called her our MVP of the class. Erica with Stonescape Steel just hired her.

Megan Ellsworth: That's awesome.

Lauren Morley: So super excited. I'd have to get with Danny, I don't know exactly who else got hired and where, and I'm not as close with them as I am with Erica. But you can definitely give Erica a shout-out because we were so excited that she hired Anna.

Megan Ellsworth: That's awesome. Okay, great. So it was two weeks long, you covered low-slope, steep-slope, coatings, in-home sales. And then also, I came and spoke to the class. This is Megan Ellsworth for the writer's reading this transcription. And that kind of gave them a different perspective of the roofing industry, not being on the roof, or in a roofing company per se. How did you think they received that?

Lauren Morley: Yeah, I think that was one of the really cool parts about our class versus all of the other ones. And obviously, I got the idea to have speakers come in, because I go in and speak at the classes. And I really wanted to make an effort to have women from all walks of life, and women who do all different jobs in the industry come in and speak to the class. Because it was almost funny those first couple days, they assumed roofing went up on the roof, like they had to get up on the roof. And I think through the speakers, we had Sarah Weiss spoke via Zoom, and she spoke to all the different roles within distribution. SRS brought in a woman named Christian who does in-house sales for SRS. Obviously we had you come, which by the way, half the women still use Roofers Coffee Shop, which is really cool. They would come in each morning and talk about articles that they brought on Roofers Coffee Shop, it was really funny.

Megan Ellsworth: Oh my God.

Lauren Morley: Yeah, it was pretty awesome. We had Jennifer Keegan, spoke to the building sciences side, and I think it really gave the women this understanding of how many other opportunities there are outside of being up on the roof.

Megan Ellsworth: That's awesome.

Lauren Morley: Yeah, for sure.

Megan Ellsworth: So what are you doing next?

Lauren Morley: Yes, so this is really exciting, we're really, really excited about it. So we've had in the works for a while, wanting to do an all-veterans class.

Megan Ellsworth: Love it.

Lauren Morley: Yeah, which was kind of the birth of the academy in the first place, was try to bring transitioning vets back to the workforce. Well, I was stressed out last week, and I got to speak on a panel about community engagement, which was really cool. And because of that, I had a lot of people being like, "When are you going to do the next women's one?" And I mean, we're a small company, so my employees can only handle so many classes every few months. But the more I talk to people, the more I was like, "Man, I really don't want to wait until next year to do another women's one." So I'm in a group with a bunch of academy people, and we were all kind of like, "Man, why don't we just do both at once?"

So the week of June 12th, us at R3NG, we'll be hosting an all-women's class again. And then the exact same week, R3NG will be hosting an all-veterans class at the CRA facilities. We will have two academy teachers at the CRA, we'll have two academy teachers here at the R3NG offices. It's going to be really fun. They do these things called cahoots, where they do morning trivia. So we're going to do joint morning trivia with both groups. We're going to do live nailing pattern challenges on Facebook, and how the groups interact with each other throughout the week. A little bit of competition, it's good for everybody. And then at the end of the week, on Saturday, we're going to do a solar shingle training for the crews together. And then we're going to host a job fair. So-

Megan Ellsworth: Awesome.

Lauren Morley: We're really excited about it. It's going to be really cool. So we'll have probably 12 women in the class, 12 veterans in one class, and then a job fair at the end.

Megan Ellsworth: That's great.

Lauren Morley: Yeah, we're excited. That'll be good.

Megan Ellsworth: How exciting.

Lauren Morley: We'll have to come in and talk again.

Megan Ellsworth: Yeah, I'll come in and talk again, and we'll have even more coverage on Roofers Coffee Shop for the next one. Is there anything else you want to add that we missed?

Lauren Morley: No, I mean, I think the biggest thing would just be, the two really cool things that's come out of this academy, there's now women in Southern California and Utah who are working with me to try and do more all-women's classes, which I think is awesome. And just the academy in general, how many people don't know about it. So I think I would just want people to know they have the resources. So if they want to do something with the academy, all they have to do is reach out to Eric Osuna, and they can reach out to me too, and I'm happy to answer questions. Because it's just such a cool program that's totally free of cost that brings roofers into the industry, which we need.

Megan Ellsworth: Yay. That's so great.

Learn more about R3NG Roofing and Gutters in their directory or visit r3ng.com.