She Wears Work Boots

Darci Spiteri is a 2nd year Electrical Apprentice with the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) Local 105 in Hamilton, Ontario. It took a few years of searching after high school, but her journey to the trades finally began in 2018, when she received the Second Career Grant from the Provincial Government. After graduating from 5-month Pre-Apprentice Program, she found IBEW and wa...

Kerri Banville grew up in a union family and has been working as a carpenter in Ontario, Canada for over 20 years. In that time, she has worked for various well known companies in the GTA as a tradeswoman, but also taking on roles as a health and safety officer, assistant superintendent, performing job-costing, estimating, planning and oversight. Most recently, Kerri has landed her dream job as Bu...

Jayne McLean, is an energetic and passionate construction professional with close to two decades of experience in the construction industry. Not only has she been involved in delivering everything from large scale commercial and institutional projects, to home renovations, but she is also the mother of 18 month-old twins.   She is a member of the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors (RICS), hold...

Samara Sampson is a Red-Seal certified sheet metal worker and member of SMART Local 285. She was one of two female apprentices to receive the inaugural BOLT scholarship and is the most-recent winner of HVAC Tactical's "Lady of the Trade" Award. She is a strong and vocal advocate for women in trades, using social media to highlight her work on-site, advocate for women in trades and create connectio...

Nicole Bigioni is the Vice President of Blackstone Paving & Construction where she has worked with her father for nearly 13 years. She is the first women in construction that I met who was both unapologetically feminine and uncompromisingly competent. She is hardworking, loyal, kind, fun and no-nonsense. She was one of my first female friends in the industry and my networking "home-base". In this...

During her University studies in Biology, Constanza Mass stumbled upon the Environmental Sciences and found her current career as an Environmental Field Technician. She has since built up a following on Instagram sharing the day-to-day of her work on-site, reviewing women's workwear and highlighting the community of women in STEM, construction, and trades. She is a fresh and engaging voice for the...

Brandi Ferenc currently works as an HVAC Journeyperson at Southlake Hospital in Newmarket, Ontario. She has been a 313a Refrigeration Mechanic/Gas Fitter 1 for over 15 years, is a part-time HVAC instructor at Georgian College and works for Support Ontario Youth as a mentor for HVAC apprentices and women in skilled trades. Brandi found the trades at the age of 34 after earning a Business Advertisin...

Kim and Tara met while running the estimating department of a medium-sized general contracting firm. Theirs is a partnership and working chemistry that is rare among women in construction. They founded XGC Consulting with a vision to provide the ultimate pre-construction experience. Kim McCarthy is a Professional Quantity Surveyor, a Gold Seal Certified Estimator and past-president of the Hamilton...

Jennifer Burstein is currently the Vice President of Construction for Collecdev in Toronto, Ontario. She is force of magnetism and confidence, and a wealth of knowledge, with almost two decades of experience managing high-rise residential projects across the GTA. Jennifer's path to building (and re-building) a career from scratch required a good dose of ambition, confidence, humility and kindness....

Welcome to the She Wears Work Boots Podcast! I'm your host, Lindsay Reynolds. For at least the first decade of my career, I was almost always the only woman on my team and I was in a bit of denial about how isolated I was. But, recently I've been making more of an effort to network and connect with other women in the industry and the more I do it the more confident I become. There are so many wome...