Greeley – Taryn Edwards is used to sticking out like a sore thumb. After all, she’s a high-ranking woman in the construction business.
But the vice president at Hensel Phelps Construction Co. in Greeley doesn’t complain about being a minority in the construction industry. She’s too busy doing a job that has included projects totaling more than $1.3 billion and helping oversee the construction of landmarks such as Denver’s Wellington E. Webb municipal building and the Hyatt Regency Denver at Colorado Convention Center.
It took a long time and plenty of work to get here.
Edwards spent years working with her father in the logging industry and had planned to go into forestry after college. The problem was the forestry industry was dying out in the Pacific Northwest, and it was hard to find a job.
So she figured construction would be the next best thing.
“It wasn’t that I yearned to be in construction,” she said. “It was an industry that seemed fairly close to what I wanted to do.”
She knew it would be difficult as a woman entering the business, but she pushed ahead anyway. When it came time for the job interviews, many weren’t pleasant. One company’s representative, mistaking her name for a man’s name, was shocked to discover she was a woman.
“It (being a woman) was seen more as an obstacle than an asset,” she said.
She did a little research and heard that Hensel Phelps Construction Co. was a forward-thinking company. She applied, got the job and started her 20-year tenure at the company, working her way up the ladder, rung by rung.
At first, she was surprised how much she liked the business.
Even though forestry was her first career choice, construction turned out to be her lifelong love.
“It’s a hard-driving industry for anyone, male or female,” she said. “You’ve got to love what you do to the bone and stick with it. It wears people out quickly.”
Still, with every rung she climbed, she said it felt like she had to work just a little harder than her male counterparts to prove she could do her job. New clients were often surprised to find a woman was handling their job. She calls that a challenge but not an obstacle.
“It’s a natural human instinct to challenge the norm, and I’m not the norm,” she said. “I will be suspected and challenged more, but that’s life and that’s society.” In the end, her co-workers say it comes down to how well she does her job and not that she is a woman.
“She’s just right there doing the job and just powers through whatever it may be,” said Marty Suchecki, a superintendent with Hensel Phelps who has worked with Edwards. “As far as people who may have preconceived notions or perceptions, she never dwells on that.”
While Edwards spends plenty of time at work, she tries to balance that with her passion to help kids.
She and her husband weren’t able to have children themselves, but that didn’t stop them from trying to make a difference. She is a past board member at the Tennyson Center for Children in Denver and has been a foster mother to 12 children.
“You know how some people find puppies or kittens, I find people,” she said. “It’s been the biggest blessing in my husband’s and my life.”
That kind of passion and caring for people comes out in her work, Suchecki said.
“She really cares about people,” he said. “Not from a standpoint of just getting the job done, but at a personal level.”
While Edwards tries to break the boundaries at work, there are still little signs everywhere showing that the industry is dominated by men. At work conferences, for example, the entertainment planned often involves activities such as golfing or skeet shooting – activities that don’t interest her.
She doesn’t complain about those little things. After all, she said, she chose this business, and it is slowly changing.
“I’m still at the leading edge, but if you wait five or 10 years, you will see a different picture,” Edwards said.
Still, she hopes the road to the top will be a little less bumpy for those behind her. At Hensel Phelps, she knows every woman who works for the company, and she watches out for them.
“I have them all under my wing,” she said. “I see part of my deal as cutting the water for those behind me. I’d like to leave them with a nice paved road.”
