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An Indestructible Woman
Brenda Wilkins of Westcraft Homes, Soul Powered and… By Nancy Dewar Photo by Alisia Dawn Photography
When I first sat down with Brenda Wilkins, I thought our interview would be about life as a woman in the world of home construction and development. After all, I was meeting with the co-owner of Kalispell-based Westcraft Homes. When I left, I was simply blown away by all that I had learned and discovered about her. Talk about peeling away the layers. Brenda’s father and mother, Marvin & Chloe Galts, started their family business in construction and land development in 1972 with projects in Alberta, Montana and Arizona. Westcraft Homes was founded in 2004 by her parents, and is now led by Brenda and her father Marvin Galts. Their current developments include Silverbrook Estates, The Meadows, Buffalo Mountain and Northland in Kalispell as well as Whisper Village in Meadow Lake Resort. While Marvin focuses on the development and finance, Brenda focuses on operations, marketing and building the team. She explained, “In development, it all comes down to having the land base, well-designed product and the right team.”
Brenda is no stranger to team building, as she began her first leadership, consulting and coaching company in 1987 in the middle of her Masters in Organizational Communications from San Diego State. She went on to complete her Doctorate in 2000 from The University of Montana. She said she fell into the field simply by “dumb luck” while getting her Masters when she managed leadership programs for corporations throughout San Diego. In describing her management development responsibilities, she said, “My job was to figure out what leadership changes were needed, develop the programs and hire the resources.”
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Her consulting business grew organically, largely through word of mouth. In her early 20’s Brenda was working in a male dominated world with companies such as Boeing, NCR Corp. and Teledyne Ryan Aeronautical Corporation. She said that refusing to work with Microsoft in the early 1990s catapulted her business! She was 26 at that time and 8 months pregnant. “I looked at the Microsoft team throwing coffee cups and dropping the F-bomb and knew that it wouldn’t be a good fit! It was the era of Microsoft Millionaire Making and I said ‘no. People thought I was crazy but it showed I had clarity about which