Girls Encouraged To Explore Careers In Construction, Enter 'Build A Bridge' TikTok Contest

BETHESDA, MD — Three sisters from Bethesda are encouraging other teenage girls to explore futures in the architecture, construction and engineering fields and, as an incentive to consider careers in the industries, are offering Taylor Swift concert tickets to the winner of their "Build a Bridge" TikTok contest.

The Goldsteen sisters — 13-year-old Emmie, 15-year-old Kenzie, and 17-year-old Sami — created a nonprofit organization called Build Girls designed to educate and empower high school females to explore future careers in these fields.

The week of March 5-11 is important to the sisters because it is Women in Construction Week, which celebrates and promotes the role of women in the construction industry. The National Association of Women in Construction (NAWIC), which sponsors the annual celebration, invited Sami to speak at its 17th annual Women in Construction Conference in Washington, D.C., last October.

"That group is amazing, and we are so lucky to have met the women. They really have helped propel us forward," Sami said of Build Girls' collaboration with NAWIC.

Build Girls' founding goes back a couple of years when, during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, the sisters got the opportunity to learn about the operations of a large construction company via online conferences, meetings and presentations. They were interning with a construction company that was doing work on the Golden Gate Bridge.

During the meetings, the sisters noticed they didn’t hear female voices or see female faces. “This was both disappointing and shocking,” Sammi said in an email to Patch.

But the realization of the lack of women in the architecture, construction and engineering, or ACE, fields inspired the sisters to create the Build Girls group.

“As young females, we simply have little to no exposure to ACE — which may contribute to what I discovered — 0 percent of public construction companies are run by a female, women make up less than 2 percent of leadership positions in the industry and for one of the largest industries in the world, women represent less than 10.5 percent of the entire workforce,” Sami said.

In surveys, girls cite a lack of female role models in science, technology, engineering and mathematics, or STEM, as a key reason they did not follow a career in the sector.

Schools are increasingly offering STEM programs, with the main focus on math and science and not on architecture, construction and engineering.

"The reality is — this is one of the fastest growing industries, with a lack of labor and amazing career opportunities, but most females learn about it too late or not at all," Sami said.

In creating Build Girls, the sisters enlisted an impressive roster for the group's advisory board, which is composed of local industry leaders, professors, attorneys and women in other fields.

Build Girls is currently working on three initiatives: interviews with ACE leaders, Discovery Days, and a national Zoom event.

For the national Zoom event, Build Girls is working with the Biden administration, members of Congress and its advisory board to put together an event for high schoolers that the sisters hope will be held during school hours over Zoom in April or May.

The group also is holding a competition: a "Build a Bridge" TikTok contest. High school girls can make a TikTok or YouTube video using a Taylor Swift song. The video must include something that involves any kind of bridge.

Entries should be submitted to buildgirls.org/enter-contest. The video with the most likes will win a pair of tickets to see Taylor Swift perform in Philadelphia on May 13, along with $1,000 in expenses.