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

That wasn’t the primary time she struggled to be taken critically 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 lady of coloration—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 women to pursue largely unseen and nontraditional profession pathways, with a give attention to the development trades.
Pictures courtesy of Judaline Cassidy

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

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

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

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

Picture courtesy of Judaline Cassidy

Discovering Her Goal

Rising up poor in Trinidad and Tobago, Cassidy’s childhood wasn’t straightforward. 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 women do.

“I needed to be Marvel Girl and a lawyer, in that order,” she contends. “I pictured myself touring the world, combating 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 faculty, which provided younger ladies conventional tracks of examine like stitching and secretarial programs. She thought she’d have a greater probability of getting in if she utilized to one of many nontraditional, development 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 increased wages, medical 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 ladies accepted to the plumbing monitor on the John S. Donaldson Technical Institute of Trinidad, now the College of Trinidad and Tobago. The opposite ladies 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 needs different women to fall in love with development as properly, however to try this they have to know that development careers exist and are even choices for them, she says. “It is extremely vital that the women are a part of the motion and the pipeline to herald the expert employees that we’d like as an trade. Ladies are 51% of the inhabitants, so why wouldn’t we would like 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 elements of the development trade management?”

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

Picture courtesy of Judaline Cassidy

Different like-minded individuals 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 variety of thought, and it has actually been a profit. The extra various in gender and background of the folks on a job web site, the higher the job is, the higher decision-making, the higher problem-solving,” says Rosalie Drago, vp 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 venture occurring immediately, but additionally sooner or later expertise pipeline. “Wherever we construct, we search for companions within the space which have these pipeline applications,” she provides. “The homeowners of Haugland are lady dads they usually wish to ensure that everybody’s daughters have the chance to entry these superb careers, to find out about them and to construct a profitable, significant profession in infrastructure and development.”

Instruments & Tiaras volunteers train plumbing, welding, carpentry and electrical abilities, in addition to classes on vanity, finance, debate strategies, activism and wholesome boundaries. The ladies take day journeys to development websites, union coaching facilities and trade companions.
Pictures courtesy of Judaline Cassidy

In 2025, Haugland discovered that Instruments & Tiaras had a waitlist of women 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 offered seed cash to assist her make it occur. “It’s an plentiful area close to a number of transit, and there’s a number of funding in power infrastructure within the space,” Drago notes.

Going from transporting instruments and different workshop provides behind her automotive, 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 provided, and provides Instruments & Tiaras the chance to lastly have an area to do after-school programming.

“We’re on the lookout for as many alternatives to interact with [Cassidy] as we are able to, as a result of folks like her, they’re the true ambassadors,” says Indira Santiago, a advertising 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 development, like each different area, is going through an incredible scarcity. And we’d like extra folks to return in. And to get extra folks, it’s essential to embrace women, ladies.”

For Santiago, not solely as a lady, but additionally a lady of coloration and a toddler of immigrants, “I do know the challenges that face individuals who come from a special nation and perhaps don’t converse the language or have an accent … and the truth that she’s been in a position to craft not solely a profession for herself, but additionally to have the ability to pay it ahead … that’s what’s going to make the distinction. That’s what’s going to carry forth women who appear to be me, appear to be her. Folks have to see individuals who appear to be them, to know that they’ve an opportunity [to succeed].”

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

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

Turner Development supplies area journey leaders, volunteers and mentors for Instruments & Tiaras, says board member Janice Haughton, senior director of neighborhood and citizenship at Turner. The contractor hosted Cassidy’s women on an energetic jobsite on the Brooklyn STEAM Heart College, which Turner renovated, on the Brooklyn Navy Yard.

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

Cassidy’s mentor, Brian Tortora (above proper). Daughter, Carey Mercer (left), a union sheet metallic employee, companions along with her mother to introduce women to development.
Pictures (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 very best 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 development venture, and “I mentioned to myself, this lady goes to go locations, and I took her underneath my wing,” he provides.

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

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

“We used to debate completely different issues on the job amongst ourselves, how you can remedy them, how you can set up piping the proper method. After which we might reference the handbook to indicate her the idea 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 increased wages, medical 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 Analyzing 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 without doubt one of the first faces that an incoming apprentice sees. As a father of three daughters, he emphasizes that this publicity “is vital for the union, and likewise for the trade.”

O’Connor says that with synthetic intelligence on everybody’s thoughts, it’s additionally vital that Cassidy is telling younger people who jobs within the trades will all the time be important. “She does an incredible job getting that info out to youthful folks. 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 all the time 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 steerage—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 all the time needed me to do extra and put others in entrance of my wants, and I discovered that from her,” she provides.

“Loads of instances after I obtain superb issues and I expertise issues that I by no means thought I’d, I ponder if she’s wanting down and saying: There’s my granddaughter. There she is.”

The Affect of One

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

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

“We all know women want greater than only a hammer of their hand; they want the instruments to construct their complete lives,” says Cassidy. “Our applications empower women 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 ladies takes a full toolkit.”

Individuals acquire 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. Once you try this for them so younger, it has an affect method into the long run … it’s only a highly effective factor,” she says. “I perceive what it might have meant after 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 metallic 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 in every single place, is the way it broadens the minds of younger women to redirect their energies to themselves,” Campbell says. “Judaline has impressed so many of those kids—and even their dad and mom. A number of the fathers stroll out saying ‘I didn’t even take into consideration this profession’,” she provides.

Kiewit area 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 that they had this American dream the place both I’d turn out to be a health care provider or a lawyer,” she says. “After I talked about I needed to get into development, they had been very intrigued, as a result of this was one thing that they didn’t actually have a lot data about.” By way of Instruments & Tiaras, “they noticed how passionate I used to be and the way hands-on it was, and the superb assist system I had with Judaline.”

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

“I usually surprise 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, learning 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 satisfaction in her voice.

“Instruments & Tiaras confirmed me that girls can do something,” Amaya says. “Because the second I held the [welding] torch in my top notch, 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 ladies 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 might try this!” she says.

This realization led Chtcherbinin-Reynoso to attend Aviation Excessive College in Queens, and she or he is at the moment pursuing an aviation diploma at Vaughn School. Instruments & Tiaras was “the press,” 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 affect of 1 is so vital,” Cassidy contends. “What we just do impacting one lady might change a neighborhood, the lady’s life, and it might change our nation. I’m that one lady who has been impacted as a result of Brian [Tortora] invested in me.”

As a lady, Judaline Cassidy dreamed of combating injustice. In the present day she has turned a ardour for plumbing into her life’s work: inspiring women to think about nontraditional careers, whereas creating the following technology of the development trade’s workforce.
Picture by Bruce Buckley for ENR

The Future Is Feminine

“She is actually taking time without work of labor to observe her dream to teach youthful females coming in by way of the trade,” 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 ladies into the trade.”

“What drives her is the look within the women’ eyes … and seeing their confidence develop,” says Cassidy’s daughter, Carey Mercer, who adopted her mom into the trades. A union sheet metallic 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 operating it and empowering women throughout the nation.

“What we’re lastly seeing in development, which has been a rough-and-tumble trade for an extended time frame, is that we will need to have protected areas for anyone coming into the trade, together with ladies,” provides O’Connor. “And what which means is the everyday development job of the previous doesn’t appear to be it does immediately, with areas the place ladies can change in shanties, or have non-public areas to scrub 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 protected and productive to return into work each day.”

Tortora says Cassidy’s efforts couple seamlessly with the union’s present mentoring program. “Judaline has the identical attributes that she’s passing on to her younger fees—a dedication to your craft, it doesn’t matter what it’s, striving to be the very best that you would be able to be, and if there’s a job price doing, it’s price doing properly.”

“For the women of immediately that Judy helps, the long run could be very brilliant,” 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 people 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 displaying them the best way.”

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

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

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