Women Who Weld: Ashley Manska

Ashley Manska was unhappy. That is the word she uses -- not "struggling" or "in transition" or any of the softer synonyms. Unhappy. She had family members who welded for a living, but she had never considered it as a career path. Her generation, as she puts it, was told to go straight to college and not get their hands dirty.

Then a customer showed her a news clipping about Women Who Weld, a Detroit-based nonprofit founded by Samantha Farrugia. Farrugia had stumbled into welding herself -- she was studying for her master's degree in urban planning at the University of Michigan's Taubman College when she walked past the Digital Fabrication Laboratory and saw sparks flying. Within weeks she was learning to weld in her spare time. By 2014, she had turned that accident into an organization with a specific mission: teach women living at or below the poverty line how to weld, and help them find jobs that pay real money.

Manska enrolled. She completed the course in July 2017. The program was not a typical vocational class. Many of the women in her cohort came from a shelter. They were in difficult situations -- poverty, domestic violence, homelessness. The welding instruction was the visible part. The invisible part was the community.

"I felt like I was starting a brand-new life, and I had a lot more confidence," Manska said after completing the program. She credited Farrugia with giving participants "the opportunity to turn our lives around and change all aspects of our lives; it wasn't just a new career."

Today, Manska is a welder at W International in Madison Heights, Michigan -- a full-service manufacturer serving aerospace, automotive, commercial, defense, and energy markets. She went from being told to avoid getting her hands dirty to building components for jet engines and armored vehicles.

The numbers behind Women Who Weld tell a story of their own. The organization reports a 100 percent completion rate among participants and a 100 percent program-to-employment rate. More than 450 women have completed training. The program operates through intensive week-long training classes and single-day introductory workshops, all designed to move women from poverty-level wages to middle-class careers in skilled manufacturing.

The Hero Lens recognizes that a Hero fills their mind with the needs of others. Samantha Farrugia saw sparks in a university lab and thought not of her own career but of women who had no access to that kind of opportunity. Ashley Manska walked into a welding class as an unhappy person and walked out as a skilled tradesperson with a future. The Service Paradox connects them: Farrugia conquered her own uncertainty about starting a nonprofit by helping women like Manska conquer theirs. And Manska, now employed in advanced manufacturing, has become proof that the program works -- which brings the next woman through the door. Heroism is not the flash of the arc welder. It is the decision to pick up the torch when everyone told you not to.