From stethoscopes to welding masks
Once bent on joining the family medical tradition, JhiKayla Mathis swapped dreams of scrubs for a welding hood — and hasn’t looked back. A college-ish path wasn’t the only way to a meaningful career for her: after a spark of inspiration from her grandfather, she dove into welding school and quickly became the kind of student instructors brag about. It changed how she sees herself and how other women imagine what’s possible.
Doing the work (and then a little more)
Being one of the few women in a hands-on trade isn’t just a line item in a resume; it’s a vibe. Mathis says she pushes herself harder because she’s aware the room is mostly men — and even fewer Black women — so she puts in the extra hours, knowing skill and confidence beat stereotypes faster than any argument ever could.
Schools are quietly rewriting the script
At the Atlanta campus of Tulsa Welding School, leadership is actively recruiting women. The school president sees female students as an untapped pool of talent that could help shrink the big labor gap in the skilled trades. Locally the share of women students is much higher than the national average, but there’s still lots of room to grow.
The cold, useful math: there aren’t enough hands to build everything
Metro Atlanta already employs hundreds of thousands in trades — about 201,000 people, roughly 7% of regional jobs — and demand keeps outpacing supply. Between new homes, roads, factories and the enormous boom in data centers, the place needs people who can actually build things. Commercial real estate reports have even put Atlanta at the top of the list for data-center construction, which equals more welders, electricians, pipe-fitters and the like.
Numbers that still sting
Despite interest at some local schools, women remain a sliver of the construction workforce nationwide. Analyses of recent federal data put women’s share of construction trade jobs in the low single digits, depending on the specialty. Those figures make it obvious: if the industry wants talent, it can’t keep ignoring half the population.
Leadership with a different origin story
The people running trade schools didn’t always expect to be here either. The campus president, for example, started out on a more traditional college path and thought she’d go into medicine. Life detoured her into education, and now she’s focused on opening doors she never saw as a kid. Her message: if these careers hadn’t been presented as options before, it’s time to change that for the next generation.
Fast lanes into decent-paying jobs
One of the perks of trade programs is speed. Some welding courses can be finished in months, not years, which gets people into paychecks quickly and into careers that are in high demand. For students who want to level up, there are specialized niches — yes, even underwater welding — that are wildly underpopulated by women and ripe for anyone who’s bold enough to try.
So what’s the takeaway?
Atlanta’s construction and industrial boom needs builders, and women are proving they can do the job — and sometimes change the culture while they’re at it. The more women take the torch (literally and figuratively), the more the industry looks less like an exclusive club and more like a place where talent actually matters. Also: if you’re a woman thinking about welding, now’s a good time to hustle — you’ll stand out, get paid, and probably have fun doing it.
