Episode 13 - Building Futures: Marla Cloos is Constructing Brighter Futures

Transcript

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Great. Hello, Powerhouse friends and colleagues and those of you who are watching the Cool Collabs podcast. So excited to be here. Wendy Cohen. I'm the founder of Powerhouse Companies. And today we have an awesome guest that I met again through all the same types of connections that I encourage all of you to do on a day-to-day basis, being open-minded and meeting the amazing people that are out in our humanity that are making a difference in the world. So today I have a really fun, cool collab and that's what it's all about. So the

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three kind of you know I would say pillars under the powerhouse cool collabs podcast is we select within my network the coolest leaders that are definitely um have the mindset of collaboration and then they live with an attitude of gratitude. So we're going to chat about that briefly and also have uh an endearing way of giving back and helping humanity. So without further ado, I always let my guests introduce themselves, but I have Mara close with us and it's it'll be interesting as we have this 20 minute commutable

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discussion um how Mara and I actually connected which is similar to what I had originally said. But without further ado, Mara, please take the proverbial microphone and share with us your story. Oh, thank you Wendy. I really appreciate this opportunity and it's so fun to connect with you. I think we've been kind of connected for a few years. So, it's nice to finally have it solidified and to be here. And I am Mara Close and I am the executive director for a 501c3 called Construct My Future. We're based

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in Oklahoma City, but we started a construction camp for middle schoolers four years ago. And out of that construction camp has now grown a high school construction internship program. And we also just held what we called our construction rodeo, which was a fairly small event for about 200 high school students to come in and to learn interview tips and techniques from experienced people in the construction industry and then to have some hands-on time trying some of the different activities. So our whole mission is

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about helping young people to understand they can have a great career, not just a job, a career in construction and they can do it without needing to go to college. oftentimes the training is paid for and it's a good good living wage with benefits and lots of great ways to contribute to our communities because without people in the construction industry, we don't have roads or bridges or homes or hospitals or schools or any of the other things that we all depend on for our communities to function. So,

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it's been an amazing journey that we have just really, really loved and we're very excited to hopefully start growing this in the next year or two to start reaching out more nationally based on what we've been able to kind of test tube here in Oklahoma City. Um, but it's been things have been growing a little faster than we actually expected, which is a true gift. So, wow, Marlo, that's really I love the whole concept and what you're doing is not only very necessary for the industry. We've been talking

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about the labor shortage for such a long time. Yes. Yes. So, all right. So, now I have to wind back and All right. Tell me how you got into where you are to have founded this, but where did you come from in the industry? Yes. So, I actually came from kind of a strange beginning. This is I'm on my fourth career now. So, I had a chance to hop around a little bit, but and I used to live in St. Louis, Missouri. And while I was in St. Louis, Missouri, I had an opportunity to come into the green and sustainability

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industry through a former colleague from IBM when I'd worked there. So, he started a startup company, got involved with him and his company, helping him to build it and stuff. And then when I moved to Oklahoma as well, I spun off on my own and became green home coach and worked in green homes primarily helping people with certification how to build or remodel or maintain their homes to be healthier to last longer be more durable you know to actually work for you instead of against you. Um, so when I

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moved here as part of my green home coach involvement, I was part of a group called Professional Women in Building and still am. And I highly recommend if you're in the home building industry, come join us. You don't have to be a woman, just be in support of women. But when I came to Oklahoma City, I got our group here going again. I also had run into this event called Build My Future, which is kind of similar to what we do, but a big high school hands-on interactive career fair, if you will. And a woman in Springfield, Missouri

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named Chariss had started it. And I knew her, heard about it, went to visit the event, and just went, "We have to do this." So, I brought it back to my PWB and our homebuilders association and we did that event and still do it. Although now the homebuilders association is running with it and that's what got me into this whole workforce development and I loved it. Yeah. Part of the reason was it was such a uniting factor. Sometimes when you're reaching out to people with something a little different, like a lot of my green and

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sustainability work did, sometimes there was some tension because people are still trying to figure out how to do things and does it make sense and the people that get it get it and the people that don't might not yet. And which I love. I love my work that I've gotten to do in the green and healthier and sustainable world. But having this work in workforce development just filled my heart and it was an opportunity to work with kids, which I love. And I'm an empty neester, so my kids aren't around

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anymore. So, it just filled so many so many empty spots. And it filled a lot of empty spots in Oklahoma City. We are getting attention from all kinds of crazy places and the higherups um because there's this growing understanding or need of that we need work-based learning. We need other avenues. We need multiple pathways for people to go have very successful careers and it's not one-sizefits-all. And for a long time, we really pushed college as the pathway. And we have a lot of kids that that's maybe not the

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right pathway for or maybe it's not the time. Maybe they need to go do something else and then come back to that later in their life. So this is just another way for us to help explore other pathways is through even in the early stage in middle school helping them to discover that they may love or maybe they hate it and they don't want to go that way that route which is fine you know so you know something they don't want to do that's great but I think the biggest thing that we've seen I've had so many parents tell

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us about just the confidence that their kids get just because they are able to do something that typically is associated with adults and it's tough and it's, you know, they go home tired from this camp especially and but they they come back the next day and they're like, "Okay, what are we doing today?" It's just been Yeah, it's been this amazing amazing journey and I have no idea where it's going to go next. Um, and it all started at a time in my life when we had gone through a very, very difficult and heavy personal medical

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situation with my husband. And so having this win was just so huge and so needed and there was such a great community around it from the very beginning and right on now through this day. So incredibly grateful for that. Yeah. No. Uh, from a big picture perspective, there's so many questions I have and we we really I wish we had way more time and so we'll have to for sure make sure we have lots of ways for people to reach you after this and we'll just try to touch on the most important things because first of all,

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I'm I want to help you in any way I can. I mean, that was how we originally got connected was Yeah. Yeah. and one of my colleagues recommended that you be a speaker and we have events all across the United States with the powerhouse smart community and we still need to talk about that. we absolutely need to share what you're doing. But uh before we get beyond that point, I just want to ask is now that you're seeing this in the construction industry and I know you and I have chatted earlier, but the audience

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doesn't know if we say construction industry, we know there are many, many trades in construction. Yes. Maybe you could be a little more specific about what you're least focusing on now. Well, and that's a really great question, Wendy, because one of the things we really strive to do, especially in camp, is expose these young people to different aspects of the construction world. We primarily focus on residential, commercial, and civil. So, civil is our roads, our bridges, um all the infrastructure that goes around in

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our towns, communities, and states. Commercial, um the larger buildings, we typically see industrial warehouses. Um, even strip malls will fall into commercial. So, you can go anywhere from small or light commercial all the way up to heavy huge commercial and industrial and skyscrapers. And then residential, we see mainly um the license trades fall in all of those. So, heating and cooling, plumbing and electrician are the licensed trades. When we get into commercial especially, a lot of times there's union trades involved which

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might be plumbers and pipe heaters, iron workers, um electrical, there's I think in Oklahoma we have 11 unions that work in the technical trades for construction. Um and then you see of course the things that we all think of carpentry, um hammering a nail, just the easy things that come to mind when we first think of construction. But one of the things that we really strive to do in camp is take them through a curriculum that that exposes them at least to the basics. So they get introduced to carpentry and painting. Um

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the the three license trades, plumbing, electrician, and HVAC. We also bring in some paving, concrete work, masonry. Masonry is a huge one that's actually building back up its education path, at least here in Oklahoma. But masons have been around for thousands of years. So it's a very old and trusted trade. Um so getting and sometimes we'll have a little different component that'll come in kind of as an elective. So for instance, one of our most popular sessions has been working with insulated concrete forms. Um they

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actually have little miniatures that look like little white styrofoam Legos. And the gentleman that teaches it, Alfonso, comes in and has a competition between two teams in the in the room. and they he's set up an a model and they race to see who can reconstruct the model the fastest. But he's awesome at getting the kids engaged teaching them about insulated concrete forms as an alternative way of building all during this fun competitive session. So, you know, we want to stretch them a little bit and get them to think outside the

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box a little bit. Wow. So, that's a lot right there. Yeah. And uh now how long have you been doing this? Um as far as the the really the interaction with the students. So the camp we've been doing this will be our fourth year this summer. Okay. And then our internship program we're just completing our first year. We're still kind of in an advanced pilot mode. We have a partnership with one school district here, the Oklahoma City Public School District that we are still working on getting it all solidified

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with them. Then we're hoping in another year or two that we'll be able to introduce it to other school districts. Wow, that would be great. So you and I have to offline have to really talk about because there's, you know, the questions I would have as a recruiter. That's my other my other hat is, you know, are you talking about all the different roles as far as a project coordinator or an estimator or a site superintendent or, you know, all the different things within construction. And then there's all the affiliates like

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drafting and architecture and interior design and kitchen and bath and remodeling. So so much so much is there. I just love the idea. I I just I know you're on to something and you know your heart is in the right place and it sounds like you're getting a lot of support from the companies that want these future leaders and from the school district and homebuilders. Is that correct? So, home builders, res or commercial builders. We've got a lot of general contractors in our programs as well as even concrete contractors and

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other kinds of companies that do all different kinds of construction. And it's really a nice variety of different kinds of companies and organizations. Our department of transportation in Oklahoma is really involved with us as well as some of the we have a local university or this Oklahoma State University has an Oklahoma City campus. They actually provide our place for our camp. So that's a wonderful partnership with them. We have Oklahoma University involved as well as some of our trade schools. So, it's been a really nice

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collection of different organizations and we love that we're getting to bring them together to meet each other and to um I have like Guthrie JobCore which is one of the federal job core locations here in the state has been involved with us from the get-go and they wanted to get more um you know tighter relationship with the union apprenticeship programs because a lot of their graduates could qualify and move on to those. And so literally they were both at the same place the other day and had an opportunity to just say, "Hey,

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okay, you two meet and get in touch with each other and make this all happen." So that's beautiful, you know, when you can knit all those different aspects together and help people just go pursue those opportunities on their own. Yeah. Oh my god, that's like the the perfect blend. you know, you're you're you know, teaching, educating something very important uh building and our our world of you know, what we've been doing for what since the generations of when we were you know from the very beginning we

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always need um talent in this area and we need to support it because I have a tend you know we had a tendency as you said to be focused on oh college education college education which does have a wonderful construction management program interior design and architecture. That's wonderful. And some of these students may choose to go that way, right? Yeah. They got interested in the beginning. And what I love is that it's a camp, so you're making it, you're turning it into fun, but it has so many

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other opportunities as well. And um I I know we don't have time to talk about everything, but one of the things that I just think it's important for you to share just what does a camp day look like or an agenda look like as far as kids need hands-on. It's not Zoom education here. So maybe because I thought that was so cool. So share please. Well, for starters, if you want to check it out, go to our website, construct my future.org, and there's a video on the very front page of our last camp. So

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that not quite as good as being there, but the next best thing. So that will immerse you into the activities. But three of the days, we do four different construction activities. The campers are all split up into crews. So they have a crew captain or actually they're going to have two crew captains this year. So a young adult that's basically their counselor and they progress through these activities throughout the day. They get breaks just like a regular camp and a lunch break and then we have some

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fun activities for them at the lunch break. But the intent is they go through these sessions that are about a little over an hour and they learn a task or a few tasks that are in that particular construction realm. So the very first day they start off with how to hammer a nail, a screw and a screw and different types of fasteners and how to use a measuring tape. Gosh basics, but you need them because nothing else works without them. No, that's phenomenal. That's fantastic. I love this. So a little bit about you please Mara. So uh

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you know I always talk about you know we we all have you know a purpose here on our you know our journey. So living with an attitude of gratitude you know describe to me you know where you are on that journey and and how you how you live every day with that attitude. So with us going through a major medical scare with my husband and I'm now also a breast cancer survivor which was seemed like a knit compared to everything he went through but nonetheless it happened. We it has just really taught us that everything that we get to do is

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just a tremendous blessing. And there were some really hard times in there that we wouldn't have made it through without the support and the love of all of our family and our friends. And I mean, I literally got arthritis in my thumbs from being on my phone so much. Okay. Okay. You gotta go with it. Thank goodness I get better. But it yeah, that was a time for us that I called my silver lining time. And back when I was actually a lot better about writing my newsletter, that was something I actually wrote about was and it actually

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really came to a head during CO when because we had just come out of all his medical stuff and literally went right into COVID a few months later. It just gave us a chance to catch our breath. Yeah. and to really appreciate having that time and that breath and you just kind of to reorient ourselves and figure out how we needed to go forward. So yes, yeah, you you can't you can't see it clearly until you get there, but I know that that that act of gratitude for us and taking that approach of the silver lining changed

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how we looked at life. And it could have been pretty rough because it was I mean we had every reason to have it be rough and tell everybody about it. But fortunately not the way either of us wanted to live our life. Yeah. Well, you're s you're you're quite the role model, my dear, and it's really such an honor to be sitting here with you and I'm so glad that all of that and you're on the way to health and wellness. And um when I talk about giving back and helping humanity, my gosh, you're starting at the very, you know, the very

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core with our young young generation and so needed and it's going to and I'm sure you're teaching that heart as part of what you're doing here because you're sharing with them that you could have a passion for what you do. You wake up every morning and you love your job, right? That's what it's all about. Yeah. our our president of our board, Will, is the one that MC's camp all week. And he's a dad of two boys. And I mean, he's a big kid himself some days, but he just gets in there with those kids and gets

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them riled up and excited, but in a good way, but also just helps them to see all the possibilities. And I I love that he's able to do that, and it's been a wonderful partnership. I feel indeed very, very blessed. Well, I I'm so honored to have this time with you today and to be able to share this. And really, for me, if we can continue to spread this out and have more and more of those um people that you're affiliated with and everyone that I'm affiliated with share this and send this and then click the links, watch your

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video, and then you and I need to figure out ways that, you know, obviously we have a huge community in Illinois and Wisconsin and Minnesota and then Naples, Florida, and California. I mean, this applies everywhere across the world, not just the, uh, North America. So, um, if I can help, and I want to, and we're going to figure out a way to make that happen. And, um, just thank you so much for giving and doing all that you do every day. It's really a blessing. Thank you. And thank you for helping to spread

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the word. And I really look forward to us figuring out some other ways. Oh, yes. I'm not letting you go now. You're part of That's a good answer. I like it. Okay. Thank you again, Marlo. This has been wonderful. And I'll be sharing all the links. Please make sure you help us spread that word. Thanks. Fabulous. Thank you again.