“As the only woman in the room or on the team, sometimes you feel an added layer of pressure. But once you find your voice it can be so powerful, bringing that diversity of opinion and new ideas of how to do something that might not get interjected otherwise.” – Kasie Bowden
BOWDEN
KASIE Project
K
asie Bowden knew from an early age that she wanted more than just a desk job. Te Houston, TX native followed in her father’s footsteps
to attend USC, where she studied civil engineering. During career fairs at school, she discovered a particular affinity with the people she was meeting from construction companies. Bowden took her father’s advice to choose a company based on a sense of connection to the people who worked there. She joined Hensel Phelps as a field engineer in 2006 and since then has steadily progressed through a variety of field positions. Currently she is a project superintendent on the $700 million UCI Irvine Campus Medical Complex megaproject. As a woman on the operations management side of the
business, Bowden has frequently found herself in the minority on the jobsite. “Demographically you don’t see a lot of women in this role,” she said. One of the most common challenges she has encountered
is a “subconscious bias” that most people don’t even realize they have. “I talk a lot about safety in my role, and some people would assume that I’m the ‘safety girl,’ – and that’s fine to be, but it’s not what I am,” she said. “Sometimes you just have to have a sense of humor and just laugh it off.” Finding her voice was critical to more fully grow into
Superintendent, Hensel Phelps
her career. “As the only woman in the room or on the team, sometimes you feel an added layer of pressure,” she said. “But once you find your voice it can be so powerful, bringing that diversity of opinion and new ideas of how to do something that might not get interjected otherwise.” A few years into her career, in 2013 Bowden joined together with a group of female colleagues who also worked in construction operations and saw the need for a support network for women like them. They founded the Southern California Chapter of the Women in Construction Operations (WiOPS). Its mission: to support the advancement of women in construction operations by providing mentorship, learning and networking opportunities. WiOPS has
since opened a Northern California chapter and represents more than 1,000 members. As she looks back on a career spanning 16 years in the
industry and counting, Bowden sees a changing landscape. “When I first started, I could name on two hands how many women were in my company in Southern California,” she said. Today, there are over 120 women in the Hensel Phelps Women’s Network in Southern California, and women represent about 18% of project managers in the region. “It’s really exciting to see more women coming up (the
ranks),” she said. But industrywide, female representation is still thin at the top. WiOPS is focusing on finding ways to create greater support for the advancement of women at all levels of their careers, not just entry or mid-level positions. For young women just starting out in the construction
industry, Bowden offered this advice: “Embody your whole self; bring all of you to work. I used to really compartmentalize myself – there would be “work Kasie” and “home Kasie.” I would find myself so exhausted at the end of the day just trying to fit into that box of what it looked like to be in construction. So work towards bringing all of you to work every day, because that is how you are going to be happiest and perform the best.”
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