When Nush Ahmed introduces herself as the CEO of the Sisterhood of Trades, she does so with a clear and powerful mission: to empower the next generation of women in the skilled trades. It’s a vision that has resonated with thousands of tradeswomen across the country, who have found in the Sisterhood a community of support, mentorship, and real talk about what it means to be a woman in a traditionally male-dominated field.
“Our mission is to empower the next generation of women in the skilled trades,” Ahmed said on a recent live taping of the Manufacturing Happy Hour podcast. “And that’s how I would introduce it if I were to have a drink with somebody.”
Joined by Brooke Lang, the Sisterhood’s Chief Strategy Officer, Ahmed spoke candidly about the challenges and opportunities facing women in the trades — and how their organization is using everything from social media to snail mail to build a community that spans generations, geographies, and specialties.
At the heart of the Sisterhood’s strategy is a recognition that the younger generation of tradeswomen is active and engaged on social media platforms like LinkedIn, TikTok, and Instagram. But rather than using these channels for the occasional holiday post or generic update, the Sisterhood is leveraging them to show the real, unvarnished side of life in the trades.
“I want people to come into the industry and stay,” Lang explained. “You have to show them what the real world is really like on the shop floor, on the job site, anything like that. So a lot of our social media and my personal social media is just showing, you know, this is what I do on my day-to-day, or this is what this process looks like. Just really trying to break it down for people who may have never been exposed to it before is a really good first step.”
I think a lot of the older generation in the industry doesn’t realize that there are as many younger generation people in the trades on social media.
But the Sisterhood’s community extends far beyond the digital realm. With a membership that spans everyone from recent trade school grads to seasoned veterans, the organization has had to find ways to serve a diverse range of needs and preferences.
Enter Discord, the chat platform that has become the Sisterhood’s central hub for connection and conversation. With dedicated channels for everything from specific trades to working moms to sports fans, the Discord server allows members to find their niche and build relationships with like-minded women.
“Discord is so organized,” Lang said. “In our [previous platform], we were getting lost with questions for welding, questions for PPE, people were asking about apprenticeships, and you would go 10 minutes, and you’d have like 130 messages. With Discord, everything’s in a specific room, you can find it easily, you can actually search in the search bar and find the conversation, find who sent it, find people by a role and see what messages they sent.”
But for all the high-tech tools at their disposal, sometimes it’s the simplest gestures that make the biggest impact. Ahmed and Lang shared stories of members sending each other care packages, handwritten notes, and even custom t-shirts — tangible reminders of the bonds that unite them, even across vast distances.
One of my favorite things is, for example, these shirts that Nush and I are wearing today were sent to us by one of our members who lives in Maine, I’m pretty sure. So all the time, we’re sending out letters, we’re receiving letters, packages, all that stuff. Just because our community wants to connect with each other in another way, right? Like, we might be different countries from each other, especially, but it’s still a really nice way to connect.
As the Sisterhood looks to the future, Ahmed and Lang are focused on continuing to build those connections — and to show the next generation of tradeswomen that they’re not alone. That work is already underway in places like upstate New York, where Ahmed recently relocated and found a thriving community of makers and mentors.
“Immediately, I was welcomed by my good friend Tuck, who’s my mentor now,” she recounted. “He’s been teaching me how to TIG weld and mill in his garage. But in his off time, he also volunteers with Rust Belt Robotics, which is a robotics club here in the area. And it’s amazing seeing all those people come together in their free time and teach the next generation about manufacturing, robotics, carpentry, how to work with their hands, and how to communicate effectively.”
It’s a powerful reminder that for all the challenges facing women in the trades, there’s also an incredible opportunity — not just to build rewarding careers, but to shape the future of an industry. And with the Sisterhood of Trades leading the charge, that future looks brighter than ever.
To learn more about the Sisterhood of Trades and how you can get involved, visit sisterhooftrades.org. You can also catch Nush Ahmed and Brooke Lang’s full conversation with Manufacturing Happy Hour host Chris Luecke on manufacturinghappyhour.com or wherever you get your podcasts.
