Judaline Cassidy is Helping Women Overcome Barriers and Achieve Success One Tradeswoman at a Time

When Judaline Cassidy applied for trade school she wanted to make sure she’d be able to secure a spot. Chances were likely that her fellow female students would not choose the plumbing program, so she decided to give it a try. Judaline didn’t know it then, but her plumbing career set her on a path that not only greatly impacted her life, but the lives of many other women, and girls, as well.  

Today, Judaline is a plumber with 25 years under her tool belt, and a tradeswoman activist who has and continues to inspire, support and educate thousands of current and future tradeswomen. Her mission is to bring much needed change in an industry where women remain vastly underrepresented. Through her non-profit, Tools & Tiaras, Judaline is helping usher in the next generation of tradeswomen through hands-on workshops, summer camps and mentorship programs for girls (ages 6-17).

Jobsite recently spoke with Judaline about her experience working in the trades, the challenges women continue to face in the industry, and how she is helping turn those challenges into opportunities.

JOBSITE: How can we attract more female talent into the construction industry?

Judaline Cassidy: Representation is so important. Seeing images does matter. Most of the time, the media uses a man to represent a plumber or an electrician or a carpenter. How would women know that these jobs are available for them if they don’t see themselves represented?

Our industry needs to better invest in working with school counselors to ensure that students are shown the option of an apprenticeship. We need to change the image in the parents’ heads of what they think a tradesperson is. Our profession is as worthy and important as being a doctor or a lawyer. I’m not a plumber because I’m stupid; if I had the financial means, I could have been a lawyer. But the world needed a feminist plumber, so here I am.

Another part of this is showing the next generation that the trades have transformed so much with technology and tools. We don’t have to roll out a big blueprint, we use tools on iPads. You can see a space through virtual reality. It’s all really cool.

That’s why I’m seeing headway through the work we do at Tools & Tiaras. Starting early, before young girls start to take themselves out of anything related to STEM is so important. Imagine if we kept on showing girls that they could be engineers, architects and plumbers?

J: Why did you decide to start Tools & Tiaras?

JC: I was talking to a few other female plumbers about how the number of women in the trades has hovered at around three percent for the last fifty years. Later that year, I was speaking at a conference, and in my speech, I said that you should give a girl a tool and a tiara, to give them confidence, independence, and power. The universe spoke to me in that moment and I knew I had to get started.

I came back from the conference and I Googled how to start a nonprofit, knowing that I wanted to change that three percent number. Last year, the data came in and it went up to four percent. I wish it was more, but I’m so glad it finally moved.

J: What was your path into the construction industry?

JC: My path into the construction industry was out of necessity. I grew up in Trinidad and Tobago with my great-great-grandmother as my custodian. When she passed away, I didn’t have the financial means to attend university. I wanted to find a way out of poverty and be able to take care of myself. The only free option available was going back to school to learn a trade, which I figured was the best choice.

The school I went to is called the John Donaldson Technical Institute, and they offered plumbing, electrical, tailoring, seamstress, secretary, and culinary arts. I wanted to make sure that I positioned myself to actually get in. I didn’t want to apply for any of the stuff that I knew other women would be applying for, so I took a chance and applied for the plumbing course. 

J: What are some of the challenges you faced then and now? How did you overcome those challenges?

JC: Initially, I had trouble getting into the plumbing program, because I was 110 pounds, standing four feet eleven inches. No one thought I could do it. I literally dropped to the ground and did push-ups to show my strength. I got in. 

The young men in my class accepted me right away because they knew that I fell in love with plumbing just like they did. We were on the same journey together.

I got married and left to move to the U.S. before I finished my last year. I was a housekeeper, a nanny, and a personal shopper until my next-door neighbor in Staten Island remembered that I told him that I attended school for plumbing.

There was a lot of building going on in New York City in the 1990s in communities of color. However, the people who lived in those communities didn’t have access to the government and private spending on the projects, and weren’t allowed on the jobs. So they formed coalitions and started going directly to jobsites to demand jobs. This led the companies to have to stop their work until they hired at least one or two people from those communities of color. 

That’s how I got back into plumbing. When I showed up on the jobsite to do the work, no one was expecting a woman that looked like me. The guy in charge tried to refuse to let me do the job, but I negotiated with him to let me prove my skills as a win-win: he’d have a great worker on his hands or he got a free day’s worth of labor.

I knew plumbing skills like fit-ins and how to cut pipe, unlike a lot of the young men they were hiring at the time. He ended up really impressed and hired me. However, even though I had a position at their company, I still had to face the challenge of getting into the union. As a woman, a woman of color, and an immigrant with an accent, at my height, this was extremely difficult.

My company funneled us to get into the union after working there for around a year. When my time came, every single male coworker of mine was accepted, but they told me to go home and do the dishes. 

I went to my car to cry, but I kept trying. While I kept working on my craft, a man named Brian Tutora noticed my work and offered to help get me into a good union. I became the first woman to get into the Plumber’s Local Union Number 271 Staten Island.

J: What have you seen change in the construction industry and the trades since you first started? What hasn’t changed that still needs to?

JC: From my personal experience, I’ve found that men are a lot more accepting. When I was working for the first plumbing company that I mentioned, it was a small, residential company where I was treated like one of the guys. 

I had a wake-up call once I started doing big construction and would sometimes be the only woman on a huge construction site in New York City. I would show up to the jobsite and no one would speak to me at first. But there was always that one guy who was strong enough to come up and talk to me, which helped everyone else open up to me.

Every time that I got comfortable and was able to win over my peers, I would then have to go onto a different site and start the cycle over again to prove myself. 

Eventually, everyone started to recognize that I was good at what I do and I earned my respect through my work ethic. When I go on jobsites today, I’m not the only woman, and I’ve had the opportunity to work with other female plumbers. There still aren’t as many women in leadership, but I’ve noticed that has started to change. More men are ready to have women join and take on leadership positions in the industry.

Case in point, the donor demographic shift we saw at the end of 2021, during one our biggest fundraising campaigns for my nonprofit, Tools & Tiaras, which exposes girls and young women to the skilled trades, while inspiring and mentoring them to excel in whatever career they choose to pursue. For the first time in the history of our organization, we had more men step up to support us. That’s a clear indicator of change, and the impact of our work.