By Emma Peterson.
The roofing industry may be traditionally male dominated, however National Women in Roofing (NWIR)’s recruitment chair, Shelby Smith, is aiming to make the field more equitable. In an effort to achieve this goal, Shelby and NWIR have just launched a microsite, RoofingisWomen.org, to help women looking to join the field. Coffee Shop crew member Megan Ellsworth got to sit down with Shelby in this episode of Roofing Road Trips® to hear all about what RoofingisWomen can do.
Shelby explained that her work as a recruitment chair has emphasized a key factor to the lack of women in the industry — a lack of information about the opportunities within the field. She elaborated, “People think of roofing and automatically think of an installer, which is an important job and is definitely available to women. However, there's also marketing, production, engineers, estimators, office managers and HR leaders. There are so many different career paths and opportunities.”
In order to try and help raise awareness of the wide variety of options, Shelby and NWIR developed the RoofingisWomen microsite as a tool. This site includes information about training and other women’s journeys. One goal for them in specific is to build a “toolkit” for those who do trade show visits. Shelby explained, “There are great schools out there that don't have roofing programs or do have roofing programs and we really want to help amplify that and accelerate women in those programs.
Overall, this site is meant to be the starting point for an entire new generation of women in the roofing industry. Shelby put it best, “The site was really designed for women who are not in the industry today and what do we want to tell them and show them to get them interested in knowing more.”
Read the transcript or Listen to episode to learn more about NWIR and RoofingisWomen.org.
Learn more about NWIR (National Women in Roofing) in their Coffee Shop Directory or visit www.nationalwomeninroofing.org.
About Emma
Emma Peterson is a writer at The Coffee Shops and AskARoofer™. Raised in the dreary and fantastical Pacific Northwest, she graduated in 2024 from Pacific University in Oregon with a degree in creative writing and minors in graphic design and Chinese language. Between overthinking everything a little bit, including this bio, she enjoys watching movies with friends, attending concerts and trying to cook new recipes.
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