Trailblazing Women: Thriving in Nontraditional Jobs - Susan Clamage
Non-Traditional Employment for Women, or NEW, opens doors to diverse career paths, fostering empowerment and dismantling gender stereotypes. By breaking free from conventional roles, women can contribute their unique perspectives, skills, and talents across industries, promoting innovation and equality. Embracing non-traditional opportunities enhances economic independence and cultivates a more inclusive and dynamic workforce.
Susan Clamage, a member of the Ambassador Council, the outreach organization of NEW speaks of the importance of NEW and the opportunities it can create. NEW prepares, trains, and places women in careers in the skilled construction, utility, and maintenance trades, helping women achieve economic independence and a secure future for themselves and their families. At the same time, NEW provides a pipeline of qualified workers to the industries that build, move, power, green, and maintain New York.
“NEW allows women looking for opportunities to have access to those opportunities. NEW is a vehicle in which women who are looking for ways to better their lives, looking to better their family’s lives, get these great opportunities to become tradeswomen, to have health insurance, to get a pension, and to look for lifelong dreams and goals. NEW’s signature projects are a great tool for developers or clients — anybody who wants to create ways in which more women are hired. Through working with partners, they can set goals higher — 15% goal or 20% goal (% of women hired) and ask all the subcontractors to hire as many women as possible. What is great about the signature project is that it makes everybody feel good.
“The Ambassador Council’s influence on signature projects comes in many different forms for me. I’m an architect, I have wonderful clients that I’ve been able to introduce to NEW. The idea that you can hire tradeswomen at a higher percentage is great. I’ve never had a client come to me and say “Oh this is not something I want to do”, everybody wants to participate. It makes everybody feel good it’s a win-win across the board and at the end of the day you have a beautiful building, a beautiful space built by women who are motivated to do their work.”
