President’s message

At the International Builders’ Show in Las Vegas earlier this year, Alicia Huey, an Alabama-based custom home builder and developer with more than 30 years in our business, stepped up to lead the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB) as our 2023 chair.

She’s not the first woman to lead our association. That honor goes to Shirley Wiseman who led NAHB more than 30 years ago in 1989, after serving as HUD deputy assistant secretary for single-family housing in 1983 and 1984 during the Reagan administration.

Opportunities to lead

Our local, state and national home builders associations have enjoyed strong leadership from women in our industry, from past chairs of the NAHB Professional Women in Building (PWB) Council like Darylene Dennon and Juli Bacon to BIAW second vice president and incoming PWB NAHB vice chair Luellen Smith, who will lead that council in 2024, all three from Master Builders of King and Snohomish Counties (MBAKS).

At the state level, I’m proud to recognize Dottie Piazza, from my local home builders association, Skagit/Island Counties Builders Association (SICBA). She served as BIAW president in 2002. And I’m so grateful to the late Audrey Borders, the BIAW past president who installed me as SICBA president and helped our association battle back to health in 2013. And finally, kudos to our most recent female BIAW president, Sherry Schwab from MBAKS, who led our association through the pandemic in 2020.

Fast forward to my year as your 2023 BIAW president. As I’ve traveled around the state this year to local installations, we’ve welcomed women leaders like Olympia

Master Builders president Becky Rieger, Spokane Home Builders Association president Sharla Jones and MBAKS president Traci Tenhulzen. Read more about these dedicated women on page 14.

As we celebrate Women in Construction Week, March 5-11, we’re featuring some of these standouts in this month’s magazine, but there are really too many to mention. You’ll find strong leaders in every local association, whether they have a formal PWB council or not.

An industry open to all

As builders, we welcome anyone who wants to join us in swinging a hammer, drawing up blueprints or laying a foundation. And while the industry continues to attract more men than women, the number of women joining the trades is climbing. Women now make up 11 percent of our workforce with more than 1.24 million working in construction.

Across all industries, women still lag when it comes to the gender wage gap, making roughly 80 percent of what men make, but in construction, that gap tightens to nearly 96 percent. Perhaps that’s one reason why we’re seeing more growth.

According to NAHB, the construction industry needs 1.2 million more skilled workers by 2025 across the U.S. Women can play an important role in addressing our labor shortage. We welcome anyone ready to work hard to help us build the American dream. And we hope everyone can experience the pride and satisfaction that comes with it.

Thank you to all our members who work together to make our association strong.