Katie Veronin’s route to her job in precision machining ran through art classes, culinary school, a chocolate shop and finally Front Range Community College.
At FRCC’s Boulder County campus in Longmont, she decided to indulge her creative urges in the school’s manual machining certificate program and then at the newly opened Center for Integrated Manufacturing, or CIM.
“Most of the things that go into the machining process, even if it’s just to make the mold, calls for some creativity,” said 32-year-old Veronin. “I like that. Working with heavy machinery is just a cool industry to get into.”
Veronin is a pioneer of sorts, being one of the few women nationally who work in machining and other manufacturing jobs, said Nicole Gervace, associate director of CIM technology at FRCC.
Fewer than 5% of the students in FRCC’s manufacturing program are women, which mirrors national trends, Gervace stated in a news release.
Although women make up nearly half of the working population in the United States — 47.5% — they remain underrepresented in the manufacturing industry, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Since 1970, women employed in manufacturing peaked at 33.2 % in 1990 before declining to 29.0 % in 2016, according to the Census Bureau.
Gervace’s efforts to get more women in manufacturing led to her being contacted in 2020 by the National Alliance for Partnerships in Equity’s Make the Future program. She joined a panel discussion and shared information about FRCC’s manufacturing programs, the release states.
The National Alliance for Partnerships in Equity encourages young women to explore high-demand advanced manufacturing education programs and careers and the group wanted insights about FRCC’s programs, according to the release.
Machining and other advanced manufacturing jobs can kick-start a career without spending years in college, Gervace said. The COVID-19 spread also has forced many people, including women, to rethink their career goals, which often leads them to high-tech manufacturing companies.
“In this pandemic, we’re finding many have lost their careers or want something different, and these types of jobs are really appealing,” Gervace said. “We hear consistently here in Colorado that there are jobs to fill and not enough people to fill them. Advanced manufacturing is a great path and we encourage women to explore it.”
Veronin said she enjoyed school but was lousy at taking tests. She knew she was inventive but could not find a proper outlet.
“When you are done with high school you are supposed to go to college and then get a good job and just go from there,” Veronin said. “But I just didn’t know what I wanted to do.”
She dabbled in art and animation courses and basic computer science programming in college. “But I didn’t do well in any of those things,” she said.
Veronin drifted into culinary school in Utah and graduated in 2015.
She returned to Colorado and got a job at Piece, Love & Chocolate in Boulder. Veronin still yearned for something more permanent and high paying and got interested in the machining classes at FRCC.
“It just struck me as something I could pick up pretty quickly and that would pay well,” Veronin said.
She enrolled in the manual machining certificate program in 2018 and eventually took classes at CIM. Veronin moved onto the school’s computer numerical control machining certificate program, completing the sequence in 2019, according to the news release.
She sought out companies that offered machinist work and toured several before she was hired in 2019 at Operose Manufacturing in Frederick. The company specializes in precision machining and prototyping, according to its website.
Veronin started out working on a lathe and later on a machine that is a combination of a lathe and a mill, she said.
She also got used to being one of the few women in her classes and at her job.
“It is an industry dominated by men,” she said. “It was quite the whiplash from working in a chocolate shop with all women and then working with all men.”
The workplace banter is different with men, she added.
“We don’t sit around talking about clothing and parties,” Veronin said. “The talk is more about the game or the stock market. It’s a little different.”
The machines she deals with do most of the work.
“It’s really not that difficult physically,” she said.
Veronin said more women will eventually be drawn into manufacturing, when they recognize the opportunities.
“I think the numbers will slowly grow,” she said. “I mean we’re not in the ’70s anymore. Women are doing a lot of different things out there.”
