And It Has Started

This last week (June 12-19, 2016) has been amazing for our new association. We launched membership at the WSRCA and FRSA shows with great success. New members are registering every day and we are hearing from women all over the country who are excited to be a part of this empowering organization.

We also launched our Founding Sponsorships. A huge thank you to the Roofing Alliance, SRS Corp., Beacon, National Roofing Partners, Johns Manville and Duro-Last who have already committed to be Founding Sponsors! We have also heard from several other companies who are interested, so stay tuned as more of the roofing industry joins this exciting movement! If you are interested in supporting NWIR as a Founding Sponsor, please reach out to us at info@nationalwomeninroofing.com

Recently at the WSRCA show, Jennifer Stone of Nations Roof organized an excellent panel of industry professionals that spoke on the subject of labor issues. They shared the importance of inclusion and how by tapping into new labor pools combined with strong training we can overcome our labor shortage. The networking was amazing with women and men staying long after the event ended.

At the show, it was inspirational to see young professionals like Lee Lipinski of Core Contractors out of Colorado, working the NWIR booth and making amazing connections. It was fun to see Lee work side-by-side with my daughter, Megan Ellsworth. Megan also worked the booth at FRSA. It was very cool.

At the FRSA show, NWIR sponsored a table at the welcoming reception. We were able to network and meet many of the Florida women professionals who are already talking about councils in both central and southern Florida. The excitement was amazing.

Next steps will be the council toolkit. This will be a pdf that shares all we have worked on and learned over the last two years. We also want to hear from you. What do you want in your area? The councils will be able to promote our four foundational goals; education, mentoring, networking and recruiting. We will be sharing ideas, but as NWIR grows, it will be about women and men sharing ideas everyday on improving the roofing industry overall.

Join the discussion or start discussions on our social media pages and on our website at www.nationalwomeninroofing.com! There is a lot more to come!!!

Education

The Education Committee will begin formal meetings in July. We are interested in adding 2-3 additional committee members. Please contact Shelly Duhaime or the committee members listed below if you are interested.

Committee Chair: Shelly Duhaime

Vice Chair: Jennifer Keegan

Committee Members: Hannah Safren and Heather Estes

NERCA was a great success for NWIR. The education committee worked in conjunction with NERCA in a trade school outreach program to co-sponsor student attendance to the trade show while offering and education of the Roofing Industry.

Special thanks to all our sponsors: NERCA for the tremendous support we received, booth space and hospitality suite, TREMCO for graciously stepping in to sponsor the hospitality event, we had close to 75 folks attend our TREMCO sponsored Hospitality Event Tuesday night and Hettrick Cyr & Associates for sponsoring our NERCA booth set-up and for supporting our organization.

The NWIR booth had many visitors stopping by to learn more about our initiatives and share their insight on Women in the Industry, all of which was very positive. We were able to introduce some women looking for career opportunities in roofing with companies filling positions, as well as make connections with diverse agencies offering resources to support our incentives and training. Special thanks to Lindy Ryan for taking time to promote NWIR on the convention floor spending time in our booth.

Congratulations to our wine raffle winners Mike Meyer of Canopy Roofing and Howard Alpert of Gilbert and Becker!