Female carpenter breaking down walls
CLAUDIA CHAMBERS can easily match skills with any male carpenter and also hold her own equally behind a welding torch.
“I just love building things,” said Chambers, who is a certified welder and carpenter.
“I like the fact that when I build something, I can actually go back and look at it and say I built that,” she shared.
After leaving high school, Chambers, who hails from Top Hill district in St Catherine, had plans to become a mathematics teacher.
She enrolled at the St Andrew-based Shortwood Teachers’ College, but quit her studies after a year. It wasn’t long before she fell in love with a new career path.
“It was while working at a bus company, as a secretary, that I saw some guys doing it [welding] and I fell in love with it immediately ,” she recalled.
She enrolled at the HEART Trust/NTA’s National Council on Technical and Vocational Education and Training (NCTVET) Lluidas Vale campus shortly thereafter, with the goal of becoming thebes tin the profession.
In 2013, she obtained a diploma in welding and fabrication, setting off her career as a professional welder. But the woman who admits to having an affinity for male-dominated career paths did not stop there.
“After completing my diploma, I couldn’t find a job, and I am a person who believes that if I am not earning, I should be learning,” she said.
“I heard about a new programme at the school called ‘Wall and Ceiling Lining’ that involves carpentry, so I went and asked the instructor if I could join. I completed the course in 2014, and that’s how I ended up in carpentry.”
After finishing her studies, Chambers landed a job working as a carpenter for a major hotel on the north coast.