Award of Excellence Winner Judaline Cassidy: Empowering Girls to Consider Careers in Construction

That wasn’t the primary time she struggled to be taken significantly as a tradeswoman, and it wouldn’t be the final. At the same time as she continued to show herself, just one man on that crew would work along with her; the others needed nothing to do with a girl of shade—an immigrant—and one with an accent in addition, she says. On some jobsites, nobody spoke to her in any respect. On others, she was taunted and ridiculed.

Cassidy makes use of the challenges she confronted rising up and in her profession to empower younger ladies to pursue largely unseen and nontraditional profession pathways, with a deal with the development trades.
Photographs courtesy of Judaline Cassidy

“For years I used to be the one girl on a jobsite. When different girls did present up, they didn’t keep. They weren’t comfy with the male-dominated workspace, they usually weren’t getting the identical alternatives as males,” she provides. However Cassidy says her moxie, grit and willpower, together with the assist of a few males, together with Nunzio, whom she calls “mallies” (male + ally), made all of the distinction.

Immediately, with 30 years of a profitable plumbing profession below her (software)belt, Cassidy is utilizing the challenges she confronted to empower younger ladies throughout New York Metropolis to pursue careers within the building business. In 2017, whereas nonetheless working full time in her commerce, she based Instruments & Tiaras, a nonprofit that exposes ladies ages 6 to 17 to largely unseen and nontraditional profession pathways the place girls —particularly girls of shade—are underrepresented.

“Numerous girls are lacking out on the profitable, life-changing alternatives that building has to supply. Jobs actually don’t have genders, and that’s the premise behind Instruments & Tiaras,” she says.

For empowering younger ladies who, like she did, lack the sources and assist to “dream large and lead profitable careers,” and for making ready the subsequent technology of expert staff whereas altering perceptions of the development business, ENR has named Judaline Cassidy its 2026 Award of Excellence winner.

Picture courtesy of Judaline Cassidy

Discovering Her Function

Rising up poor in Trinidad and Tobago, Cassidy’s childhood wasn’t simple. She by no means knew her father and was raised by her great-grandmother after her mom deserted her. Her dyslexia made studying and writing a problem. Classmates teased her. However she had large goals, as younger ladies do.

“I needed to be Surprise Girl and a lawyer, in that order,” she contends. “I pictured myself touring the world, preventing injustice.”

When her great-grandmother died and Cassidy was rendered penniless, she misplaced each her assist system and her goals of faculty. Cassidy utilized to the native commerce college, which supplied younger girls conventional tracks of research like stitching and secretarial programs. She thought she’d have a greater likelihood of getting in if she utilized to one of many nontraditional, building paths. She selected plumbing as a result of “I figured if I labored with electrical energy, I’d get shocked. If I labored in plumbing, I’d get moist,” she says, along with her trademark giggle.

From the second she was launched to plumbing, Cassidy fell in love with it. Within the union, she gained entry to its apprenticeship program, together with greater wages, medical health insurance and a pension plan—and this modified the course of her life and her household’s life, she says.
Picture courtesy of Judaline Cassidy

Initially denied entry to this system, she persevered—at one level dropping to do pushups to show she was succesful. Cassidy was one of many first three girls accepted to the plumbing observe on the John S. Donaldson Technical Institute of Trinidad, now the College of Trinidad and Tobago. The opposite girls dropped out, “however the minute I used to be launched to plumbing, I fell in love with it,” she says. “And I’m nonetheless in love with it.”

Cassidy desires different ladies to fall in love with building as nicely, however to do this they have to know that building careers exist and are even choices for them, she says. “It is extremely necessary that the women are a part of the motion and the pipeline to herald the expert staff that we’d like as an business. Ladies are 51% of the inhabitants, so why wouldn’t we wish that a part of the inhabitants to have these good jobs and to make the cash that comes from it and to be in all components of the development business management?”

And that’s what she’s doing, by way of workshops, summer season camps and college displays: “I need dad and mom and the steering counselors to know that the development business is the opposite four-year diploma, and that’s what the union brings,” she says.

Picture courtesy of Judaline Cassidy

Different like-minded persons are taking discover of her efforts. “It’s not nearly hammers and nails. This [industry] is about fixing issues on a jobsite, second to second. So, we’d like range of thought, and it has actually been a profit. The extra numerous in gender and background of the individuals on a job web site, the higher the job is, the higher decision-making, the higher problem-solving,” says Rosalie Drago, vice chairman of exterior affairs and strategic engagement for civil infrastructure agency Haugland Group.

As the primary feminine Commissioner of Labor for Suffolk County, Drago oversaw the workforce applications on Lengthy Island. She says Haugland is dedicated to investing in not solely native hires for a challenge taking place immediately, but in addition sooner or later expertise pipeline. “Wherever we construct, we search for companions within the space which have these pipeline applications,” she provides. “The house owners of Haugland are woman dads they usually wish to make it possible for everybody’s daughters have the chance to entry these wonderful careers, to find out about them and to construct a profitable, significant profession in infrastructure and building.”

Instruments & Tiaras volunteers educate plumbing, welding, carpentry and electrical expertise, in addition to classes on shallowness, finance, debate strategies, activism and wholesome boundaries. The women take day journeys to building websites, union coaching facilities and business companions.
Photographs courtesy of Judaline Cassidy

In 2025, Haugland realized that Instruments & Tiaras had a waitlist of ladies who needed to be a part of this system. To accommodate them, the contractor helped Cassidy find to a brand new headquarters with workshop area in Brooklyn’s Trade Metropolis, and supplied seed cash to assist her make it occur. “It’s an plentiful area close to numerous transit, and there’s numerous funding in power infrastructure within the space,” Drago notes.

Going from transporting instruments and different workshop provides behind her automobile, and her present and really small workplaces in Queens, Cassidy says this new area will allow this system to extend the capability of the work at the moment being supplied, and provides Instruments & Tiaras the chance to lastly have an area to do after-school programming.

“We’re searching for as many alternatives to have interaction with [Cassidy] as we will, as a result of individuals like her, they’re the true ambassadors,” says Indira Santiago, a advertising and marketing coordinator with Skanska USA. Final summer season, the New York metro division of the Skanska Ladies’s Community sponsored t-shirts for the women attending the Instruments & Tiaras summer season camp.

“What she’s doing is large; she’s shifting the needle,” Santiago says. “As a result of building, like each different discipline, is dealing with an amazing scarcity. And we’d like extra individuals to come back in. And to get extra individuals, it is advisable embody ladies, girls.”

For Santiago, not solely as a girl, but in addition a girl of shade and a toddler of immigrants, “I do know the challenges that face individuals who come from a special nation and perhaps don’t communicate the language or have an accent … and the truth that she’s been capable of craft not solely a profession for herself, but in addition to have the ability to pay it ahead … that’s what’s going to make the distinction. That’s what’s going to convey forth ladies who appear like me, appear like her. Individuals have to see individuals who appear like them, to know that they’ve an opportunity [to succeed].”

Alongside a 30-year plumbing profession, Cassidy works to empower ladies who, like she did, lack the sources and assist to dream large. In 2025 she wrote a e book (above left), sharing her recommendation for anybody who desires to seek out —and pursue—their personal ardour.
Picture courtesy of Judaline Cassidy

There may be “a extreme lack of funding for women in careers that don’t fall right into a preconceived thought of what ladies must be,” says Instruments & Tiaras board member Tia Oros Peters, CEO of the Seventh Technology Fund for Indigenous Peoples. “However ladies within the trades are the long run. It doesn’t supplant or change anyone; individuals can work alongside one another to be taught and develop collectively. Constructing one thing that gives expertise and shallowness is nice for the financial system, and it’s good for households.”

Turner Development gives discipline journey leaders, volunteers and mentors for Instruments & Tiaras, says board member Janice Haughton, senior director of group and citizenship at Turner. The contractor hosted Cassidy’s ladies on an lively jobsite on the Brooklyn STEAM Middle Faculty, which Turner renovated, on the Brooklyn Navy Yard.

“Turner opens its jobsites and company workplaces to supply real-world internships and insights,” Haughton says. “Through the years, we’ve witnessed numerous inspiring examples of how this system can encourage the subsequent technology of leaders, and I’m notably pleased with two younger [Tools & Tiaras] girls I mentor, who are actually in faculty pursuing levels in civil and structural engineering.”

Cassidy’s mentor, Brian Tortora (above proper). Daughter, Carey Mercer (left), a union sheet steel employee, companions along with her mother to introduce ladies to building.
Photographs (center left) by Scott Blair/ENR; (backside proper and left) courtesy of Judaline Cassidy.

Paying It Ahead

As a younger plumber, Cassidy “was very devoted to her craft, and she or he needed to do the most effective job potential,” says Brian Tortora, a retired union plumber and welding teacher for Plumbers Native No. 1. He met Cassidy early in her profession on a Staten Island building challenge, and “I mentioned to myself, this woman goes to go locations, and I took her below my wing,” he provides.

“She consistently requested me questions of the roles that we had been on. ‘Why are we doing it this fashion? How come we’ve to do it this fashion?’ And I’d reply her questions and assist her out as finest I may,” he says.

However typically the questions had been a little bit a lot, so Tortora gave her an orange mechanical handbook that had all of the plumbing formulation and equations in it. “I instructed her: ‘Right here, please learn and research this,’” he laughs. It’s a e book she nonetheless has to this present day, he provides.

“We used to debate completely different issues on the job amongst ourselves, the way to clear up them, the way to set up piping the proper approach. After which we might reference the handbook to indicate her the speculation behind it,” he says.

After studying that Cassidy had utilized to the Staten Island Plumbers Union and had been turned down a number of instances, Tortora used his affect and pushed the union to rethink. It labored, and Cassidy grew to become the primary girl accepted into Plumbers Native No. 371 Staten Island.

As a union plumber, Cassidy gained entry to the union’s apprenticeship coaching together with greater wages, medical health insurance and a pension plan, and “this modified the trajectory of my life, and my household’s life,” she says.

Later, she grew to become the primary girl elected to the Inspecting Board of Plumbers Native 1 in New York Metropolis after the unions merged. In 2016, she ushered within the first Ladies’s Committee inside her union, turning into its first president. She at the moment sits on the union’s government board. Paul O’Connor, Native 1’s enterprise supervisor, says Cassidy is among the first faces that an incoming apprentice sees. As a father of three daughters, he emphasizes that this publicity “is necessary for the union, and likewise for the business.”

O’Connor says that with synthetic intelligence on everybody’s thoughts, it’s additionally necessary that Cassidy is telling younger those who jobs within the trades will at all times be important. “She does an amazing job getting that info out to youthful individuals. And what she’s doing [to change the number of new workers choosing construction] goes to pay ahead for generations.”

“Rising up, life was powerful,” Cassidy says. “We didn’t at all times have stuff, and never having a mom in my life was tough for a very long time, even in my maturity, however my grandmother, and her steering—ensuring I went to highschool, I went to church and volunteered—that led me to the trail that I’m on now, as a result of I grew up with anyone who at all times needed me to do extra and put others in entrance of my wants, and I realized that from her,” she provides.

“Numerous instances once I obtain wonderful issues and I expertise issues that I by no means thought I’d, I’m wondering if she’s wanting down and saying: There’s my granddaughter. There she is.”

The Influence of One

“Plumbers defend the well being of the nation,” says Cassidy. She shares this and different phrases of inspiration with the lots of of scholars who’re launched to building careers although her displays in New York Metropolis public faculties every year. “The primary query they ask is ‘How a lot cash can I make?’,” she laughs. “Once I inform them, their eyes get very large.”

Roughly 250 ladies attended Instruments & Tiaras’ applications, weekend workshops and camps in 2025. Cassidy brings in feminine mentors—volunteers from native building companies—who educate the women plumbing, welding, carpentry and electrical expertise, together with classes on shallowness, finance, debate strategies, activism and wholesome boundaries. The women take day journeys to building websites, union coaching facilities and business companions. In addition they hear from visitor audio system: girls working in different fields corresponding to finance, aviation and authorized.

“We all know ladies want greater than only a hammer of their hand; they want the instruments to construct their complete lives,” says Cassidy. “Our applications empower ladies each actually and figuratively, pairing hands-on expert trades expertise with the vanity and boundary-setting work delivered by a specialised nonprofit companion. As a result of creating full, unstoppable younger girls takes a full toolkit.”

Contributors achieve a way of confidence, says Estelle St. Clair, a New York Metropolis union carpenter of 26 years and Instruments & Tiaras volunteer. “Their minds simply develop. Whenever you do this for them so younger, it has an influence approach into the long run … it’s only a highly effective factor,” she says. “I perceive what it will have meant once I was a lady to have that motivation.”

“I see the enjoyment on Judaline’s face when she sees the women reply. She’s like a proud mom,” says Toni Campbell, a sheet steel tradeswoman whose 13-year-old daughter, Parker James, has been attending Instruments & Tiaras applications for the reason that age of six.

“The significance of this program for the youngsters in our space, and youngsters all over the place, is the way it broadens the minds of younger ladies to redirect their energies to themselves,” Campbell says. “Judaline has impressed so many of those kids—and even their dad and mom. A few of the fathers stroll out saying ‘I didn’t even take into consideration this profession’,” she provides.

Kiewit discipline engineer Tanzira Rashid has additionally been concerned with Instruments & Tiaras since its early days, attending summer season camp beginning at age 14. A 2025 graduate of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Rashid, 23, says it influenced her profession path.

“My dad and mom are immigrants, so they’d this American dream the place both I’d develop into a health care provider or a lawyer,” she says. “Once I talked about I needed to get into building, they had been very intrigued, as a result of this was one thing that they didn’t actually have a lot information about.” By means of Instruments & Tiaras, “they noticed how passionate I used to be and the way hands-on it was, and the wonderful assist system I had with Judaline.”

Studying confidence at a younger age is essential for women, Rashid provides.

“I usually marvel if I’m doing sufficient,” says Cassidy. “Then I’ll get a textual content message from somebody like Penelope Amaya, who’s in faculty now, finding out to be an architect.” Amaya lined up an internship with a woman-owned architectural agency by way of her Instruments & Tiaras mentor. “She sends me life updates,” Cassidy provides with pleasure in her voice.

“Instruments & Tiaras confirmed me that ladies can do something,” Amaya says. “Because the second I held the [welding] torch in my top quality, I cherished it.”

Samantha Chtcherbinin-Reynoso didn’t know what she needed to be when she grew up, however she knew she didn’t need a desk job. After being launched to girls pilots by way of one of many Instruments & Tiaras camps, which she started attending when she was 12, she says her eyes had been opened to a profession she had by no means even imagined was potential: “I used to be like, wait, I may do this!” she says.

This realization led Chtcherbinin-Reynoso to attend Aviation Excessive Faculty in Queens, and she or he is at the moment pursuing an aviation diploma at Vaughn School. Instruments & Tiaras was “the clicking,” she says, that helped her decide “what I wish to do for the remainder of my life.”

“A household will are available in to enroll their daughter, after which a mother or an aunt will wind up going into the trades,” provides Haugland’s Drago. “So, it means development for the household in that respect, when it comes to employment and alternative, as a result of a lot of the households aren’t conscious of the best way to entry good union careers.”

“That influence of 1 is so necessary,” Cassidy contends. “What we do exactly impacting one woman may change a group, the woman’s life, and it may change our nation. I’m that one woman who has been impacted as a result of Brian [Tortora] invested in me.”

As a lady, Judaline Cassidy dreamed of preventing injustice. Immediately she has turned a ardour for plumbing into her life’s work: inspiring ladies to contemplate nontraditional careers, whereas creating the subsequent technology of the development business’s workforce.
Picture by Bruce Buckley for ENR

The Future Is Feminine

“She is actually taking day without work of labor to comply with her dream to teach youthful females coming in by way of the business,” says O’Connor. “The message that she’s spreading and the discussion board that she’s utilizing and the voice that she’s utilizing [is a benefit for] not simply Plumbers Native 1, however for all trades and for entry for girls into the business.”

“What drives her is the look within the ladies’ eyes … and seeing their confidence develop,” says Cassidy’s daughter, Carey Mercer, who adopted her mom into the trades. A union sheet steel employee, Mercer can also be the Instruments & Tiaras’ BOSS, which stands for builder of sisterhood and success. Mercer hopes to see this system develop and develop into different states with tradeswomen in numerous cities working it and empowering ladies throughout the nation.

“What we’re lastly seeing in building, which has been a rough-and-tumble business for a protracted time period, is that we should have secure areas for anyone coming into the business, together with girls,” provides O’Connor. “And what meaning is the everyday building job of the previous doesn’t appear like it does immediately, with areas the place girls can change in shanties, or have non-public areas to wash up.” This must be extra employer-driven, O’Connor says, “as a result of that’s what we’d like for everyone to really feel secure and productive to come back into work daily.”

Tortora says Cassidy’s efforts couple seamlessly with the union’s current mentoring program. “Judaline has the identical attributes that she’s passing on to her younger expenses—a dedication to your craft, it doesn’t matter what it’s, striving to be the most effective that you may be, and if there’s a job price doing, it’s price doing nicely.”

“For the women of immediately that Judy helps, the long run may be very vivid,” Tortora contends. “Primary, they’re very fortunate to have [the Tools & Tiaras program], and that they’re given a chance. As a result of there are those who wish to go on the market. They wish to work with their palms. They wish to construct one thing. They wish to contribute to society. And Judaline is exhibiting them the best way.”

“I actually consider of their potential, as a result of I do know as a lady, you consider deep down inside, you may be something and every thing you wish to be, till society smushes that fireside,” says Cassidy. “At Instruments & Tiaras, that’s my job. And what I’ve realized from my grandmother is to make it possible for fireplace by no means will get extinguished.”

“Hopefully now I might be anyone who some younger woman can look as much as. She will be able to say, ‘Judaline is a plumber. She is an immigrant similar to me. And he or she’s doing it so I can do it.’”

Maybe Cassidy’s dream of turning into a superhero has come true in any case.