Women Building the Future of Lifting: Careers, Innovation & Impact

Welcome to Safety Factor – Why This Industry Matters

– [Amanda Long] Most people assumed the bird, not the machine, but quickly learned that here we are working with heavy equipment. And I got to really cut my teeth with the frontline craftsmen. I was our main trainer up to a little over 300 days a year in that fifth year.

– [Kathleen Fay] Ended up coming to Mazzella, working in a part-time role between accounting departments and the sales office. And now I’m the CFO. At some point I had safety under me, the branches. So you just kind of do whatever you can and what the business needs.

– [Melissa Ruths] We’re going down the highway and there’s some construction going on and my daughter goes to her friend, do you see that crane? Do you see the stuff on the crane? My mommy’s company makes that. And she was like so proud.

– [Lili Radu] Everything that’s over 50 pounds, you have to have something, whatever that is to help you move it from here to there. And that’s where we come in.

– [Long] If we can save life or limb in five minutes, it is worth it.

– [Announcer] For your own safety, you are reminded to stand behind the yellow line.

– [Ben Hengst] Lifting and rigging. It’s more than hard hats and hooks. It’s engineering, it’s finance, it’s training, it’s strategy. Welcome to Safety Factor. My name is Ben and today is Global Lifting Awareness Day. We’re talking about careers in lifting and rigging and how people are building long-term futures in this industry.

We’ve gathered a panel of leaders who’ve each taken a different path into the field and they all happen to be women. We’ll talk about how they got here, what keeps them in the industry, and what advice they’d give to anyone considering a similar path.

So could you all just introduce yourself? Tell us a little bit about your background in the industry and how did your career path lead you into lifting and rigging?

From Part-Time to CFO

– [Fay] Okay, thanks. I’m Kathleen Fay. I’m the CFO of Mazzella Companies. I just completed my 32nd year here.

– [Hengst] Wow.

– [Fay] I got a accounting degree in Kent State in Kent, Ohio. And I happen to know the Mazzella family a lot for my life. So I had handed my resume to Tony to try and get it out there in his network and ended up coming to Mazzella, working in a part-time role between accounting departments and the sales office.

Yeah, and I’ve worked in different roles all in accounting. Within about a year, our accounting manager left and both Tony and his brother Jim gave me the opportunity to take over in that accounting manager role. From there, through acquisitions and other people we brought in through finance, I was the VP of Shared Service. I’ve been controller and now I’m the CFO.

A Global Industrial Career Journey

– [Ruths] Hi, I am Melissa Ruths. I’m Chief Marketing Officer at Kito Crosby. And oh, different path to get here.

So I have a chemical engineering degree, and as I was completing that, I worked for Shell in their upstream oil and gas. And that’s when I first learned that I loved the industry. I thought the technology was fascinating. I got to go to site and see a natural gas well there and I just wanted to be a part of it.

But I decided I didn’t want to necessarily be the engineering role that I had. I kind of wanted to be my boss’s boss’s boss, and I thought what she was doing looked really, really cool and just a little bit more strategic, but still on the technical side.

So I went and got an MBA and briefly worked for Anheuser-Busch doing beer marketing. So also very fun, but very different. But that was very important because it really taught me that I wanted to do something more in the industrials and technical space. I really missed that part when my very brief CPG stint. So I ended up working for Emerson, which is a big global industrial company.

My particular focus was a lot of business development, product management, marketing in their transmitters. So pressure, temperature level, wireless transmitters. So, got to go to countless chemical plants, refineries, power plants and see them in action, which was just so much fun.

Moved to Singapore for five years. Working all across Asia and then moved back to the US and took a global sales role, traveling all over, talking to customers about digital transformation. And I guess through that journey, the things that I came to appreciate were very high-quality product, focus on innovation, you know, supreme focus on safety, and an appreciation for actually building things and constructing things and making things happen.

And so I really fell in love with the industrial space, but I decided I wanted to go work for a smaller company, one where it would be a little easier to see my impact and just a better learning environment for me as the next step in my career.

So I was very fortunate to get connected to what was The Crosby Group at the time, and Gunnebo Industries and Straightpoint had just come into the family, and they needed a marketing and product management leader. So I was able to join the team in January 2020. A fascinating time to join a company. I think we had about seven weeks of normal life. And then of course went into COVID mode. And then three years later in 2023, joining up with Kito Corporation to form Kito Crosby. So now here I’ve been five years and absolutely loving it.

From Romania to Cleveland: An Engineering Career Path

– [Radu] So my name is Lili Radu and I’m the Design Engineer Manager at Mazzella. I’ve been with the company for 21 years, in the industry for 31 years.

I came from Romania in ’94, and of course, I was looking for a job and I did not have any AutoCAD experience. I didn’t even know what AutoCAD was. I was looking for an engineering position. Nobody said anything about the drawing board. And after about nine months of searching, I found the only job in Cleveland that was for an engineering position on the drawing board.

So I got the job, I knew the drawing board very well, and that was in the lifting industry. And I started designing spreader beams, and coil hooks, and other lifting devices on that drawing board. And then I learned the ropes of AutoCAD. And the interesting, actually fascinating side for me was seeing all those designs of mine coming to life in the shop, that company was also manufacturing everything that I was designing.

So I was like, wow, this is totally different than what I was exposed to. Back in Romania, I worked in the natural gas industry, I was running gas pipes from the street into the homes. Coming here, it was a cultural shock, an industrial shock. And then to get to see my product being made in the shop made all the difference. So that’s my story.

– [Hengst] And you sit on ASME B30.20’s Subcommittee, correct, Lili?

– [Radu] Yes, yes I do.

– [Hengst] So how did you get there?

– [Radu] Tony suggested that maybe I should join the BTH-1, that was newly created, which is the design of the lifting devices, or the B30.20, which is the safety part of the lifting industry.

I went to as a guest to both of the subcommittees’ sessions. And I like the safety more. I figure that I do math all day long, running calculations and you know, for designing lifters, I was very interested in the safety part because in my previous life, nobody talked about safety. So I was like, okay, this is different. Let’s do this. And I’ve been in that subcommittee, I’ve been a member for about 15 years now.

– [Hengst] Wow.

From Poultry Science to Lifting Industry Leadership

– [Long] Hey, everybody. I’m Amanda Long. I serve Interplay Learning and ITI as the Senior Vice President over our industrial market.

So my path to get here has been fun and exciting. I actually have been exposed to the world of lifting since I was very young. My dad actually finally retired this year at over the age of 70, having 50-plus years in the lifting business. And so my exposure came when you could still go to a chemical plant with your dad for work and sit under his desk and go sit in the crane. And so I’ve always been in the realm of lifting.

My dad progressed his way up to be a lifting expert in the industry, and through that, safety was always at the forefront. So I’ve had always a deep, deep appreciation for him coming home at the end of the day. And I think I really latched onto that as I got into this industry.

My adult path to get here was, I actually have a degree in poultry science, and I used that for a couple years. I’ve always been in a customer-facing role and I was into sales, and chickens are nowhere cool. So I looked to relocate back home.

At the time, my dad had a small crane and rigging training company that he operated on the side while being the Technical Lifting Authority for BP. And it got to be where, you know, it might need a full-time operator in place. And I said, hey, what if I come home, take it over, and see what we can do.

So I did that, and when I left poultry and went to cranes, most people assumed the bird, not the machine, but quickly learned that here we are working with heavy equipment. And it was really exciting. I got to really cut my teeth with the frontline craftsmen and ended up in the five years of growing that company for our family, I got to really see the why behind what we do. And it’s really about educating the frontline craftsmen.

I did most of our training after getting onboarded, and I was our main trainer up to a little over 300 days a year in that fifth year. And then was purchased by ITI. So that was really exciting. And ITI was looking to set presence in the Gulf and our company was based out of Houston.

The CEO, Zach Parnell of ITI at the time, very innovative, had a great idea to join the Health and Safety Council in Pasadena. And I said, man, it’s a really good idea. You can’t beat ’em, you join ’em. And here we are. It was an amazing thing.

Grew that in the Gulf and elevated within ITI to not only do our training, which I kind of phased out of in the first couple years after acquisition, into strictly a customer facing role and then into our sales leadership. And we grew that company over eight years that I was solely with ITI and was our head of sales there.

And then we just got acquired by Interplay Learning, a digital software company that had previously focused only on light commercial residential spaces, but always focusing on the frontline craftsmen from a digital perspective for training. And so it was a very natural bolt-on to ITI, and now I serve the combined organization to really set our strategy direction and customer facing path into the industrial market.

So, bringing the tools in from Interplay, having the amazing industrial customer base at ITI, and creating our strategy to be successful, combining those organizations into the industrial market.

And if I talk about just the passion behind lifting and rigging and what that brings from a risk category into the training space, that’s what keeps me going. So it’s really cool to see what we’re able to do from an education perspective with cool, innovative, amazing tools, and then, you know, legacy products like just the peer-to-peer interaction and the face-to-face learning that we’re able to do.

Advice for Building Careers in the Lifting Industry

– [Hengst] Thank you. So, when you all think about where you started and then where you’re at now, what helped you build a long-term future in this industry?

– [Long] I think very early on, so Ben started by sharing, you know, we’re women in the industry. And at that point I was very young in my career and you know, I had mentioned my dad was at BP and had to get called out to a job site for his role and there was a class scheduled the next day.

So, it was a, you know, I’d been training to do that but wasn’t quite, maybe signed off yet, if you will. And so it was a ‘ready or not’ and I told my dad ‘or not’, you know, ‘or not’, but the next day, you know, he gave me a piece of advice that I still hold at the core of every engagement that I have with anybody from a customer facing side or anybody that I would be educating relative to lifting and rigging. And that is to know what you don’t know.

So that is something that has guided my behavior and thinking and strategy and execution and education for this industry is to wildly celebrate knowing what I don’t know and filling those gaps. So I would have a parking lot a mile long when I first started. Every break, everything I would call industry resources from, you know, all of the committees that [NC]CCO, or ASME, or other trainers in the field, or just anybody that I could get my hands on to teach me the gaps.

And that has really helped me build a reputation for quality knowledge because I verified that what I am sharing is accurate and applicable or I say, I don’t know, let me tap into the resources at my disposal and see if I can get you the right answer that’s going to help you solve the problem, make the lift, you know, make the decision, whatever it is.

– [Ruths] I’m going to build on Amanda, I love what you said, Amanda, know what you don’t know. When I first came into the industry, it was very easy for me to know what I didn’t know ’cause I didn’t know anything. I honestly didn’t know what a shackle was.

And so coming in, what really surprised me and I think just helped me on my journey here was the insane passion by every person that I met in our industry. And you could imagine, new person shows up, new female shows up, that there would be kind of a, “well, you know, you got to learn some things before we’ll take you seriously.” It was the opposite. Everybody was so excited to help and would sit down with me and go through products with me, or take me to visit a sling shop, or teach me the history of our company.

The first AWRF I went to Paul Boeckman, he is head of our engineering team. He took me around and just introduced me to anybody that he could, and Paul knows everybody. So it was great and I just, I’ve never felt so warmly welcomed anywhere, and I’d say five years later, I still see that. People are just so excited about what we do, and their history, and just want to share it with everyone and the next generation, it’s really awesome.

– [Fay] What keeps me in, obviously, I’ve been here quite a while. I think the family atmosphere and obviously the family ownership of the company is what’s really kept me involved, but also the entrepreneur mentor that I’ve had in Tony, and I think going back to his mom and dad and even, you know, Matt and Adam, I think just the Mazzella family in general is really not afraid to take risks and try things new and be bold and be different.

Through a lot of the 90s, we opened up branches, and then through the 2000s and beyond, we’ve acquired a lot of companies. So I’ve had the opportunity to learn a lot of things about the industry and meet different people from different companies as we’ve acquired them. And just what’s really kept me involved is really touching into those people and hearing their story of how they got to where they’re at and where these businesses grew to where they feel like the Mazzella Company could take them, you know, somewhere else.

Also, throughout the years, you know, at times, usually what happens in finance with smaller companies is you tend to be the HR person, the IT person, just, you know, the jack of all trades. At some point, I had safety under me, the branches. So you just kind of do whatever you can and what the business needs.

And I think that ever evolution and change here is what’s kept me for so long and it’s brought in new people, and people have come and gone that have really impacted me in this industry. But I think it’s really the family feeling, the Mazzella family specifically that’s probably kept me here, but also the coworkers and partners and inventors and customers.

Learning on the Job: Growth Through Curiosity and Support

– [Radu] We all go off of Amanda’s saying, ‘know what you don’t know.’ So when I started in the industry, I really didn’t know anything. It was the culture shock. It was the fact that everything in America, everything in America, was so much bigger than home. Starting with cars and buildings, and the roads, and even peppers, the red peppers were so much bigger.

And I got the job on the drawing board engineer, and I had to start and learn from like the first shackle. I went through the Crosby catalog, the Campbell Chain catalog, catalogs from different manufacturers. I had to learn, I mean, I knew the basics of strength calculations, but I had to learn every piece of the design process.

And I was lucky I had very good mentors. The first one was my manager at the first job, and he pushed me to get my PE license, which I’m very proud I got in 1998. I worked 10 years at that company, and I learned a lot from the guys in the shop. I learned a lot from the people in the office, and I learned a lot more from the customers. I went to visit a lot of customers from steel to construction to automotive industry. And I got to see all of their lifting needs, and that was basically the base of my knowledge and experience in the lifting world.

And then 10 years later when I came to Mazzella, it was Tony that opened my avenues into the B30.20 safety world. Kathleen is right, it’s like a big family. You are connected to everybody, everybody’s helping everybody and I’m just happy to be here.

Challenges and Innovations in the Lifting Industry

– [Hengst] Well, one of the problems that this industry is we struggle to bring people into the industry. It’s not necessarily considered the most exciting industry. So what have been some of the changes that you’ve either seen or they could be upcoming changes that you’re excited about? What has excited you about some of the innovations in this industry?

– [Fay] Well, I think from the, you know, internal side of Mazzella, the thing I think of especially is the excitement around e-commerce and finally getting a website and internet experience, so that we can really elate customers and get them drawing in and buying just like other traditional avenues like Amazon, et cetera.

I think in general, though, we’ve always been, as you can tell from just both the technology standpoint, from our ERP systems and our marketing departments, and just the sales, we are not afraid to try new things. We’re not afraid to be the first in the industry to try things. I think we’re trying to forge our own path and not follow others. So I think that’s been exciting.

I do hear what you’re saying as far as people not looking, and I think it’s just more about building our networks and really getting our voice out there. And getting, I think the social media platforms we’ve been using with YouTube has really helped because I think people watch our videos a lot and do comment on that, and there’s a lot more. It’s just got to be available for people to see. And I think a lot of what we’ve done with a YouTube channel and some other methods is really getting the word out there.

I do think the trend though now, and I’m hearing it a lot, I have son in high school and I do think we’re going back to where people don’t want to go off to college possibly and get a degree, but they are really looking at what they could do with their mechanical skills and they’re not feeling like that’s the right path for them.

So, I think tapping into trade schools and some high schools like that and getting, you know, familiar with that. We used to have a pretty big, what I would say, seasonal workforce program, and I can think of some people that are in leadership right now that started that way.

So I think just, again, it’s a lot of referrals and also kind of continuing the programs that we’ve started. But yeah, some of the cool things we’re doing now with some of the cranes and you know, some of the departments and divisions that we have now and just where we started from or how few products we offered, to now, the breadth of services and products that we offer through training and services is just, it’s grown tremendously. So I’m very excited about that still. Always, every day.

Adapting Training for the Next Generation

– [Long] Talking about your son and what’s, you know, the way he’s thinking or viewing the opportunity post high school. I think what most excites me about what’s coming for our industry and what’s here and will only grow is the intersection between digital and practical training.

Obviously that’s the world that I’m living in is really getting the tools and experience and education out to people, not just about the opportunity with the industry, but how to do it well to progress and make a career or to be proficient and safe and grow in their competencies across, you know, the exact role that they’re in. But when I look at the innovative tools that are coming through digital experiences or through innovation for not only job site tools, like the actual way cranes are performing and the upgrades that are going into some of these older cranes to make them safer or more efficient or more innovative, but also the ways of educating people. And I think that’s where I would encourage that we try to shout it from the rooftops that the opportunity is there to build and grow an amazing career inside of different craft roles.

Even if you do, like I love the part of your story, Melissa, where you’re like, “ooh, I want to be my boss’s boss’s boss’s boss.” You know? Yes, you can. And you can grow into that corporate role even though you’re starting in a craft position in that space, and then taking every bit of that innovative tool and understanding it’s here, it’s staying. So, leaning into that innovation for educating our young craftsmen, and then how do we put the right tools in their hands to learn based on what their task to do for that type of company.

It excites me because I think the sky’s the limit with, you know, digital and complementing that to the actual hands-on that they need.

Seeing the Work in the Real World

– [Ruths] There’s two things that come to mind for me. And I think all of the digital activity, the amazing videos and photos that are out there, we’re helping educate people on what our industry does, on what it actually enables. And to me that was just really exciting.

Of course, I know all of us are now to the point where you can’t drive anywhere without pointing out rigging and lifting equipment. It was so cute. I was driving my daughter, she’s almost nine, and her friend to volleyball practice, and we’re going down the highway and there’s some construction going on, and my daughter goes to her friend, “Do you see that crane? Do you see the stuff on the crane? My mommy’s company makes that.”

And she was like, so proud of that. And of course I was like, oh, she’s starting to connect the dots between, you know, the products that I’ve shown her and what it actually does. It builds roads, and she’s proud of that, to tell her friends.

So I think, you know, this is GLAD and a lot of the work that the industry is doing to make those connections, I think, really it will continue to bring awareness to what we can accomplish.

And then on the innovation side, for sure, I agree with Amanda, so much amazing things in training. And then also I think it could be easy to look at our products and think, oh, those are simple. You know, what can you possibly do? But what I love about the industry is it’s continuously innovating, continuously trying to improve.

And one of the things I see is focus on ergonomics. So that people are safer, more productive when they operate. And a lot of benefits there of extending the lives of workers, which is really exciting. And then also I think it allows for maybe people who wouldn’t think of entering our industry, they think, “Oh, I’m not capable of that kind of work or of doing those activities.” Well, by designing better, better tools, more ergonomic products, then it becomes an easier entry point for them and they feel that they’re, you know, totally capable of entering our industry. So I’m really excited to see what’s going on there, too.

Why This Work Matters

– [Radu] Technology wise, I’m just amazed that in ’94, when I was going through AutoCAD school, you had to type a half a page to draw a line from point A to point B. And now we got to the point, it was DOS, D-O-S system, and then we got to Windows, and CAD, and SolidWorks, and they run simulations on our lifters all day long, and they’re all colorful, and red is not good. Blue is good.

I get it. it’s 30 years away, apart, but it’s such a big transformation from what you had to do in ’94 to create a drawing of your, to put your thoughts onto paper, to where we are right now.

As far as drawing people into the industry, I can tell that our engineering team, we have three young engineers and they are really, really passionate about what we do, and the fact that every lifter is different than the previous one, and we have so many different categories, it’s just a plus because you’re not designing the same thing over and over again.

And then I’m an active member of my community, and people are asking me,

“So what do you do for a living?”

And I’m like, “Well, I’m an engineer.”

“What kind of engineer?”

“Well, I’m mechanical engineer.”

“And what do you do?”

Like, “Well, actually, we design lifting devices that you put on your crane hook to lift your load to move it from here to here.”

And then I get calls from the same people saying, “Well, my son just graduated from college and he’s got a mechanical engineering. Can he call you, and can you talk about it?”

Or, “My son is applying for colleges, he’s graduating high school. Can you talk to him and tell him?”

They feel that if I’m so passionate about it. And I mean everybody’s like, “wow, a crane. That’s something big and unheard of.” But basically, it’s just a design like any other stuff. You run your numbers, you put it together, you load test it at the end, and off you go, you have a lifting device or a crane.

Defining the Lifting Industry for Outsiders

– [Hengst] So, Lili, and this question’s for everyone, but how do you describe this industry to people who don’t really know anything about it? Or maybe they’ve never even considered it as a career option?

– [Radu] Well, you won’t believe how many people don’t even look, don’t even think about, like Melissa said, you drive down the road and you see a spreader beam hanging off of the, you know, everybody went home and the beam is up on the boom, or you cross a bridge and you have the wire ropes that are supporting the structure, and nobody pays attention. Nobody gives it a second look, but you know, everything that’s over 50 pounds, you have to have something, whatever that is, to help you move it from here to there. And that’s where we come in place.

And like Kathleen said, I think through the YouTube videos and marketing and you know, we get to open this world to a lot of people and more than before, like in ’94 there was no YouTube, there wasn’t even, the email was AOL, we had one email for the entire company. So it’s different times, and everything goes at light speed. And I’m sure it’s still, I think it’s going to get much, much interesting and better, and more people are going to be looking into our field.

– [Long] Look at the, like, if it is a young person asking, you know, or we’re trying to educate a young person on what this industry is, I might understand their exposure and break it down into what they can see or you know, like the driving down the road or be exposed to, relative to this industry.

Because if I think about somebody whose parents might do amazing things like a firefighter or a doctor, but might have limited exposure to trade work, or construction activity, or oil and gas, really talking about how it affects them and their daily lives of, you know, getting the gas in their parents’ car to take them to the party and like breaking it down backwards from there, of all of the things that make the world go round. At the beginning of that, and then throughout that process, is something relative to the industrial market. And everything in the industrial market uses lifting and rigging activities or equipment to accomplish that.

And so the world of America, you know, when they’re looking at it from a career landscape, it should be the opportunities are endless, the sky is the limit. And in every single one of those designs or work streams, there is lifting and rigging happening at different scales because a lot of times we think, “oh, these big cranes and heavy civil construction” to describe them, but like the intricate details of pharmaceutical manufacturing to create these, you know, things have mechanical and electrical processes and that’s all craft work.

Like, there’s just so much exposure that we can do to describe the impact that they could have on different people groups that matter to them in their stage of life. And I think that’s where there’s so much opportunity when it comes to the activity that we serve, which is, you know, the lifting activity, because you can go into any market. Like Melissa, I loved your background because it’s all over the place from the organizations that you serve and how they, you know, impact and how they measure success, because that is where, you know, lifting and rigging can be all over the place when it comes to a career opportunity. So that’s like just kind of breaking it down so they can see the saturation of that activity across different career paths.

The Most Rewarding Part of the Job

– [Hengst] Last question, what’s the most rewarding part of your job? What keeps you coming back every day to work in this industry?

– [Fay] For me, it’s the challenge. It’s the opportunity, it’s the constant change, I think. And it’s the people, obviously, we work with. There’s a lot of people, you’re really, you know, working close with people. Like Amanda had said earlier, everyone is willing to help each other out. There’s a lot of camaraderie and family type, you know, atmosphere, and people really want to do a good job, and they just really feel challenged.

This lifelong learning aspect of Mazzella is what kind of keeps me coming here. It’s been around, I think back to the early 90s when I started here and went to the Gathering of the Games with a few people. And I think, like Melissa said, you know, they do take you under their wing and kind of explain the industry. They’re super proud.

I mean, even going back to, you know, Mr. Mazzella, I can remember the handshake deals of keeping in your own territory that went back and, you know, the things he tried to come in and do every day. Tony Mazzella is the same way. Matt and Adam are the same. Everyone just really wants to kind of say, you know, the sky’s the limit, and what else can we do differently?

I mean, we’ve put in an apprenticeship program, which I think is super important to development and getting the word out there. And again, we’ve just really invested in a lot of the people within the company and in the community that we really want to kind of bring them into the industry.

– [Radu] For me, is pretty much everything that Kathleen said. And also the satisfaction when you get an email or a call from a customer saying, “Well, your lifting device works perfectly and we were able to dismantle the furnace,” or “We were able to move this piece of equipment,” and just the day-to-day activities where you design something, you quote it, you create the drawings and then you see it being made in the shop and going out the door on the trailer to your customer. It’s just something to be proud of and really makes you come back next stage to do another one.

– [Ruths] For me, it’s this passion, and it gets to manifest itself in many ways. On one hand, I feel that within my company, but within our industry, we have a lot of flexibility to be creative and try new things, be innovative, and just say, you know, I’m really interested in exploring this. What if we tried this? And there’s a lot of support and partnership in doing that.

So a lot of flexibility and freedom there. But then the passion also manifests itself in just this clear priority and focus on safety. And I think that that’s really special to have on one hand that flexibility and that creativity. And on the other hand, just overall complete focus on doing everything that we do extremely well.

And so that, you know, we all are contributing to safe workforces and safe sites, and you know, I’ve got two kids at home, and there’s nothing more important for me than being able to go home to them. And it fills me with such pride that everything that we do, you know, products, training, all of us working together throughout the industry, is enabling more people to go home safely to their families. And that’s what really, really fuels a lot of the work that I do.

– [Long] You took the words almost exactly out of my mouth, Melissa. I was going to say that the frontline that builds our world they are the beginning stages of building our world, go home at the end of the day.

I think I mentioned it in my introduction that that’s what gave me such a deep appreciation for the, what sometimes can feel like, “is that necessary?” Yes. Like the way I do everything is a bit overkill because my dad was always so safety-minded, but ultimately, he got to come home from the job site every day.

And that is what I truly, in my heart of hearts, feel that what everybody on this call works on on a daily basis enables those craftsmen to go home to their families at the end of the day. Like, I truly feel that all of that makes a difference. And if we can educate, I’ve often said it in the realm of training, if we can save life or limb in five minutes, it is worth it. Like five minutes of education or five minutes of learning to do something smarter, or more efficient, or more effective. But to educate them in a way that they can go home and feel, not only go home, but feel better about themselves and excited about their career. It fuels me to my core that these people are going home because of the work that we’re doing.

Learn More About Careers in the Lifting Industry

– [Hengst] All right, so thanks everyone for joining. Amanda, Melissa, how can people learn more about you?

– [Ruths] Thanks so much for having me on. So to learn more about our products or our training capabilities, you can go to kitocrosby.com.

– [Long] And thanks guys. This was really exciting to be here, and to learn more about ITI an Interplay Company, you can go to iti.com.

– [Hengst] All right, so you can track down Kathleen, Lili and myself at mazzellacompanies.com. Don’t forget to pop into our Learning Center where we have a ton of videos, articles, podcasts and free downloads on anything lifting and rigging.

If you’re interested in a career in this industry, then check out insidemazzellacompanies.com. You can see our open positions there. You can learn more about Mazzella Companies, and don’t forget to subscribe to Safety Factor wherever you listen to your podcasts. Or you can watch it on the Lifting & Rigging Channel on YouTube.

Thanks for listening. Stay safe out there.