“If you can’t beat them, join them.”

This attitude is what led Mittie Cannon, then a young female college graduate from South Georgia, to fib and say she could do electrical work in order to break into the construction industry. Construction jobs were plentiful, and she simply couldn’t understand why women weren’t entering the trades.

“In order for me to find out what I wanted to know, I had to join them,” she says.

Cannon was on track to go to medical school, but the plentiful jobs and curiosity regarding the construction industry’s lack of diversity lured her in. Her path led her to a job in workforce development, where she used every possible opportunity to recruit women to the industry. It quickly became her passion.

“It grew with me, I grew with it and we became one,” she says.

That passion expanded and evolved into Power UP Inc., the first organization of its kind dedicated to educating young female talent on construction career pathways and using industry partnerships to work diligently to remove barriers that previously prohibited the development of a diversified workforce.

Now entering its fourth year, the organization’s flagship event, “Power UP: It’s a Mother-Daughter Thing,” held in Birmingham, Alabama, educates girls and their mothers on pathways into the construction industry, engages them through one-on-one dialogue with employers and helps them explore the industry with hands-on activities that reflect real-world situations. Cannon chose March to coincide with Women’s History Month and Women in Construction Week.

“It was amazing to see how everything came together, and I enjoyed being a part of something that big,” says Nayla Stubbs, a welding student from Fairfield High Preparatory School in Birmingham. “Hopefully I get the chance to do it again next year.”

The program is Cannon’s answer to the question she continued to ask herself: “What can I do to help women cross this threshold?” She wanted to develop a program where everyone could come together to encourage women to step into the construction industry, so she surrounded herself with people who were willing to take off their competitive hats and work together to become part of a larger solution to the workforce shortage.

The mother-daughter event—now supported by a collaborative partnership that includes Central Six AlabamaWorks! and Central Six Development Council (501c3), Girls Inc. of Central Alabama, Robins & Morton and AIDT/AWTC—has had tremendous success with more than 800 attendees and representatives from employer partners, training providers and higher education institutions.

Cannon’s original intent was a one-time event, but Jay Reed, president of Associated Builders and Contractors’ Alabama Chapter, encouraged her to do it annually.

“Workforce development is bigger than any one association. It’s bigger than one company,” Reed says. “Being industry leaders like we are, anything we can do to improve development is critical. It’s consuming our boardroom and our members’ boardrooms. We have to solve it.”

Cannon has a long workforce development history with ABC and has developed great relationships within the industry, so the Power UP program was an obvious fit for the chapter to support.

“Every study that comes out says we need to reach out to folks earlier and earlier,” Reed says.

And that’s exactly what Power UP is doing. Additional programs have been launched since the first mother-daughter event, including summer camps (some of which offer NCCER credentialing); workshops for owners, education professionals and other industry stakeholders; and Power UPs (PUPs), which introduces pre-kindergarten through seventh grade students to construction.

Cannon’s plan for expansion is simple: relationships. “Since I started Power UP, I haven’t spent a dime on PR or marketing,” she says. “I shouldn’t have to pay someone to share my story. If your story is worthwhile and you’re doing the right thing and it has value, people will come to you. There’s no reason I can’t grow this program through my relationships.”

Relationships are at the core of the organization’s mission, too. Cannon is currently working with a group of eighth graders whom she’ll stay in touch with until they graduate high school. Every other month, the group participates in a Power UP workshop, with the goal of eventually enrolling them in the ABC Alabama Academy of Craft Training.

Cannon believes in developing the whole person, so she also works with these young women on communication skills, financial literacy, diversity and inclusion initiatives, and more.

Currently, Power UP has programs in Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia and Mississippi, with no plans to slow down.

“The connections ABC has statewide are starting to form the perfect conduit for Power UP to take this into school districts across state lines,” Reed says. “We’re looking at a 2019 program that will expose Power UP to the southeastern states. Simply put, the program is getting traction because it is successful.”