Portland-area women find success in construction

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During national Women in Construction Week the DJC is shining the spotlight on a few of the women making impacts in the industry. We talked to four who are succeeding in Portland’s construction community and found a wide array of interests, backgrounds and career goals.

Ali O’Neill initially handled administrative duties for O’Neill Electric, a contracting firm she and her husband started in 1998. Eventually she became a project manager.

Sherlyn Martin is vice president of GreenLife Construction Inc., a small, but growing construction company she started with her husband in 2003.

Christina Fell is a project manager for Emerick Construction’s Special Projects Group, but she is developing a new position within the company to focus on MWESB outreach.

Lauren Holmes, a project manager with Howard S. Wright, two years ago received a regional honor from National Association of Women in Construction.

Ali O’Neill

Just as O’Neill Electric has grown substantially in the past decade, so too has Ali O’Neill’s role within the company.

O’Neill and her husband, Maurice Rahming, started the company together in Southwest Portland in 1998. At first, with no formal construction training, O’Neill worked in an administrative position to handle the paperwork part of the business.

“Honestly, Maurice asked for help, so I got into it out of the interest of helping my husband,” she said. “But once I got more exposed to the business, I started incorporating project manager into my role.”

O’Neill Electric has since become a multimillion-dollar contracting company, thanks in large part to the construction projects O’Neill has headed. Many of the projects have been federal contracting jobs for the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs and the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Most recently, she served as project manager for a $3.7 million addition to a forestry research center in Corvallis.

O’Neill calls herself “a proud graduate of the school of hard knocks,” because she learned about the construction industry firsthand, with no formal training. One thing she has discovered is that multiple areas of expertise are required – something she enjoys immensely.

“Growing up, you are told to pick a profession,” she said. “Although construction may not have the most glamorous reputation, you get to learn a lot about law, architecture … accounting – it really integrates a lot of professions into one role. It stays really interesting.”

O’Neill said that because of her gender she has had to fight at times to be taken seriously. She mentioned one instance when a potential employee called her husband “the brains of the operation,” and her “the pretty face.” Also, O’Neill Electric is a minority-owned business, which can come with its own set of challenges.

“In the field, you’re really in charge of a lot of technical details and a high dollar value, and it’s harder for women to be actually given that responsibility,” she said.

“I have a lot of friends who want to be architects, but women – and people in general – don’t realize you get to work a lot with architecture and engineering in construction. Getting a job in construction is a lot easier too.”

She added that she is unsure whether the number of women in her field will grow in the future. But O’Neill herself is continuing to take on bigger projects each year and set the bar higher for O’Neill Electric. – Reed Jackson

Sherlyn Martin

Sherlyn Martin is a serial entrepreneur. Though she doesn’t have any formal business training, Martin has a knack for spotting opportunities. She has opened an after-school program, a Creole catering company, and now she and her husband, Gilbert Martin, run a growing construction company based out of their home in Happy Valley.

Martin, 52, said she was tired of seeing her husband’s skills unappreciated at a construction company in California when she suggested starting their own business. So slightly over a decade ago, the Martins left the Bay Area in hopes of finding greener pastures in Portland.

“He was working really hard and wasn’t getting paid for his talent and expertise,” Martin said. “So I got on the computer and did some research. The Portland area seemed like a good place for construction.”

When the Martins first arrived, they passed out fliers and took on any projects they could get – mostly residential painting or flooring jobs. But networking through the Oregon Association of Minority Entrepreneurs and ongoing training helped GreenLife Construction land a five-year contract with the Air National Guard.

“Our business has been growing ever since,” Martin said.

Martin is the vice president and co-owner of GreenLife Construction, which focuses on commercial tenant improvement projects. While she used to work on the projects alongside her husband, she now spends most of her time soliciting subcontractors and coordinating paperwork for bids and budgets.

Martin said that when she used to work on more jobsites painting, roofing or carpeting, she often encountered men who didn’t think she could do the work by herself. But she dealt with situations through humor, by playing the role of a damsel in distress.

“I would just be like, ‘Oh, you’re so big and strong. Could you please, please help?’ And then he’d just walk away,” she said. “I mean, if I couldn’t do those things, I wouldn’t be there or take on those challenges, so my husband and I would joke with him that way.”

The Martins are again looking for creative ways to keep their business moving forward. The tight rental market in Portland has inspired the couple to begin eyeing plots of land and look into building a triplex.

“The accomplishments I’ve seen in myself and the way I’ve grown in this business gives me such a good feeling,” she said. “Women shouldn’t limit ourselves or be afraid to try different things, especially in the construction industry.” – Lindsey O’Brien

Christina Fell

A bit more than six years ago, Christina Fell became a project assistant at Emerick Construction. She has since worked her way up.

Fell helped build the company’s Special Projects Group, for which she was a division manager. The group allows Emerick to take on a wider range of projects, including jobs that require a shorter turnaround, or need a quick reaction to a unique situation – seismic retrofits, insurance claims or demolition, for example.

Just a few weeks ago, Fell, 35, returned from maternity leave after giving birth to her second child, and she will soon be transitioning again within the company.

Fell is designing a new position for herself, spearheading Emerick’s outreach to minority-owned, women-owned, and emerging small businesses.

“We need someone to corral all of the different sides of this thing and bring it all together,” Fell said. “(MWESB) is becoming very relevant in almost all public jobs. My challenge will be to set my own processes in place.”

While she has succeeded in the industry, Fell said that when she was in high school and college she never would have thought that she’d enter the construction industry. She began her career in the accounting department for a landscaper, and then moved on to another accounting position. But she grew restless.

“I wanted to do more,” she said.

Now Fell performs work that satisfies her, and serves as one of the directors of the Portland chapter of the National Association of Women in Construction, where she values the opportunity to network and share stories.

“Women in the industry just have a different perspective, and it’s good on the business side and the personal side to support each other,” she said.

And Fell hopes that encouraging young girls to try their hands at construction work will result in progress for women in the industry.

Emerick recently completed renovating the building for the Girl Scouts of Oregon and Southwest Washington on Southwest Barbur Boulevard. The company has developed a longer-lasting partnership with the Girl Scouts in conjunction with NAWIC. In the future, local girl scouts may have the opportunity to earn a “construction patch” by attending a program hosted by Emerick.

“Working in construction never even crossed my mind when I was that age – it just wasn’t an obvious direction to go,” she said. “But attitudes are changing in the industry and in general for what women can do.” – Lindsey O’Brien

Lauren Holmes

Despite being the daughter of an electrical contracting company’s vice president, Lauren Holmes, a Howard S. Wright project manager, wasn’t always sure she wanted to join the construction industry.

“I originally wanted to be a lawyer,” she said. “But once I found out how unexcited I was about business school, I wanted to try something different.”

After her freshman year at Oregon State University, Holmes sat down with a group of friends who were marketing majors and decided that she too wanted to go into advertising. However, she also wanted to put her math skills to good use, so she decided to major in construction engineering – a field that she said is similar to advertising.

“When it comes to construction projects, you have to sell your ideas and then implement them from start to finish,” she said.

Since graduating in 2005, Holmes has worked as both an engineer and a manager for a number of high-profile construction projects in the city, including the transformation of an abandoned industrial structure into the RiverEast Center green office building. She also has worked on numerous renovations for local schools.

“You get to feel a part of something (when working with schools); it feels like a home and a family as opposed to a job,” she said. “It’s really rewarding being able to work with students to teach them about the construction process and getting them to formulate a curriculum around green aspects of the new facility.”

Holmes, who was named 2010 Woman in Construction of the Year for the Northwest region by the National Association of Women in Construction, said she has had to overcome a number of preconceived notions of women in the industry.

“The industry for a lot of years has been about the ‘good old boys’ not trying to address the fact that there are more women entering into the field,” she said. “At times, people think I’m a receptionist when I walk into the job trailer, but that just means I have to work a little harder to prove myself.”

Holmes said her graduating class at OSU included only four women who majored in construction engineering. Every year since, however, she has noticed an increasing number of women entering her field.

“I hope to be a role model for other women taking this path to show them that anyone can do it if you roll up your sleeves and put in the work.” – Reed Jackson