Home Builders Association of Greater Des Moines elects all-female board for 2020
BPC Staff Mar 10, 2020 | 8:19 pm
4 min read time
920 wordsAll Latest News, Real Estate and Development
By Tracy Dickinson | BUILD Des Moines
Editor’s note: The Home Builders Association of Greater Des Moines’ board is made up of all women in 2020. The milestone is a first among all HBA boards across the country.
The news is timely. Over the weekend the world celebrated International Women’s Day, and last week the U.S. recognized Women in Construction Week. In 2018, about 1.1 million women were employed in various occupation sectors of the U.S. construction industry, making up 9.9% of the industry’s workforce, according to the National Association of Women in Construction.
This story first ran in Build Des Moines, a magazine run by Sherry Failor, and was submitted to the Business Record by the Home Builders Association of Greater Des Moines. View the orginal publication here.
The political climate in the United States continues to grow more and more divisive, and some groups struggle to have their voices heard and their concerns addressed. But the Home Builders Association of Greater Des Moines has quietly taken a different approach with dramatic results.
Nationally, female builder membership in the HBA remains about 5%. In Iowa, that number is even lower. But you wouldn’t guess that to look at the list of 2020 HBA Executive Committee members. For the first time, not just in Iowa but in the country, a local HBA chapter will be led by an all-female Executive Board.
President Rachel Flint, vice president of Hubbell Homes; First Vice President Kalen Ludwig, director of sales and marketing for Groundbreaker Homes; and Second Vice President Jenna Kimberley, vice president at Kimberley Development, sat down with Build recently to discuss the milestone. They were joined by HBA of Greater Des Moines Executive Officer Dan Knoup and board secretary Amy Kimberley of Ferguson Bath Kitchen & Lighting Gallery.
“I know it’s a first for an all-female HBA board,” Flint says. “So I guess it’s a big deal, but I don’t want to be known as the first or best ‘woman’ anything. I just want to be the best at what I do.”
Jenna Kimberley agrees. “I got involved with the HBA when I came back to Iowa because it was a way to give back and to get involved in what was happening in the industry locally. I was the last to join the leadership team here, and being nominated and elected is such an honor and opportunity to show young women what this industry has to offer.”
“Being a woman in this industry does mean we’re in the minority, but my goal has always been to be good at my job, not because I have to prove myself as a woman but because I want to be good at what I do. Being nominated for this gave me confidence to get even more involved,” Ludwig says.
Among the team’s top objectives for the year ahead are to encourage involvement from all members and to show women that the home construction industry offers a wealth of opportunities for them.
Jenna Kimberley says, “We all took different paths to get here, and there are even more opportunities available now.”
Knoup, in fact, sees women as key to bridging the skilled trades gap. “Any field for which people used to say, ‘Women shouldn’t do that’ — those are the careers that are wide open for women.”
“We are at crisis level with the trades,” Flint says. “Seeing women get into the trades is a mission we’ve had for the past several years. We want women to see that you can have a steady career and make good money in this industry.”
“With only 5% of builders and contractors being women nationally, it’s no surprise that it’s taken this long for there to be an all-female board,” says Ludwig. “But we’ve had strong leaders to follow, and hopefully young women will see that with our leadership, too.”
Attitudes toward women in nontraditional fields have been changing, sometimes by force and sometimes by necessity. For the HBA of Greater Des Moines, that change has happened over decades, often as a result of women taking the same approach as this year’s board — by doing their jobs and doing them well.
“We have always had such strong women actively involved in the HBA in Des Moines,” says Flint. “Those women and the HBA were so important in my career in educating me and mentoring me.”
Knoup says active roles for women in the HBA of Greater Des Moines used to be limited to the Women’s Council, which was more of an auxiliary group. The Des Moines group has been nationally recognized and has actively sought opportunities for women within the industry, even when roles were much more segregated. The Professional Women in Building has now replaced the Women’s Council, and the Des Moines group again is leading the way nationally.
Iowa has not had a reputation as one of the most progressive states in the country, so the fact that Iowa is the first to elect an all-female board indicates what women have been up against around the U.S. Flint, Jenna Kimberley, and Ludwig all say that their success is in part the result of those who were willing to go against the norm.
“We have to give credit to the men who educated, mentored, and believed in our ability to do the work we do,” Flint says. “Bill Kimberley, Rick Tollakson, and Steve Bruere were each forward-thinking enough to put a woman in a position that was really unheard of in this industry.”
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