Leading Without Limitations
SMACNews’ July/August 2026 cover story on women in HVAC and sheet metal leadership, Leading Without Limitations, featured our Vice President, Athena Chiera. SMACNews is the flagship magazine of the Sheet Metal and Air Conditioning Contractors’ National Association (SMACNA), which represents about 3,500 union sheet metal and HVAC contracting firms. SMACNA is also an ANSI-accredited standards body, and its duct construction and installation standards are written into the mechanical specifications we build to every day. As a self-performing mechanical contractor, a SMART Local 105 signatory and a longtime SMACNA member, Athena Engineering reads SMACNews as our own industry’s trade journal, so this feature meant something here.
Asked how women are really doing in the trades, Athena’s answer was characteristically blunt: “It’s better, but don’t pop the champagne.”
Who else is in the room.
Athena shares the pages with Michelle Acosta of ATS Mechanical, Kathy Kerber of KSM Metal Fabrication (who chairs SMACNA’s National Women in Leadership Committee), Jen Clark of General Sheet Metal, Devon Madon of Madon Sheet Metal, Gina Medel of The Penn Air Group, and Renee Hoffman of Miller Sheetmetal. Very few of them planned on this industry — several came in through a family business, and at least one arrived by way of a Ph.D. in Shakespeare.
The numbers for women in HVAC are moving, slowly.
Women in construction made up 11.2% of the U.S. construction workforce in 2024, the highest share in 20 years, according to an NAHB analysis cited in the feature. In the trades themselves, the Institute for Women’s Policy Research puts the share closer to 4%. More women are entering training than before, but too many leave in the first year. Isolation and thin mentorship drive a lot of that, and so does PPE that was cut for someone else’s body.
“Retention is the real scoreboard, and we’re not winning it yet.”
Athena Chiera, Vice President, in SMACNews
Where Athena comes from.
Athena grew up on our jobsites. Her mother, Jannie, founded Athena Engineering in 1984 with her father, Richard, who ran the technical side, and Athena joined the company full time in 2006, the start of a second-generation partnership that still runs the firm. A year earlier, we had gone union because we needed better training and more skilled workers, and that decision still shapes how we hire and develop people. In 2008 she took over our safety program, which is where most of her work on keeping people in this industry ends up.
What would keep more women in HVAC.
The fixes Athena pushed for to keep women in the trades are practical. Women need PPE that fits, from gloves and boots to harnesses, because gear that fits badly is a safety hazard. They need reliable bathroom access on jobsites. They also need a way to report harassment that they actually trust, which is why we launched an anonymous hotline in 2025 that routes around any manager involved in a complaint. It is one piece of how we think about belonging on our crews.
Better safety for women in HVAC turns out to be better safety for everyone on the crew. Athena followed the same thread at this year’s National Safety Council Safety Congress, which she wrote about in My Turn at the Safety Congress, her account of the 2026 SMACNA Safety Sponsorship.
The goal.
Athena told SMACNews that she refuses the smaller version of the job someone tries to hand her, and she wants the next generation to feel free to refuse it, too. Her ten-year goal is for a girl to be able to say “I work in HVAC” or “I’m a welder” and have it land as ordinary. It is also why women and girls are one of the three pillars of our community work, and it is the idea behind To Our Daughters: Play in Dirt, Dream Big.
SMACNews · July/August 2026 cover story
Read the full feature.
Leading Without Limitations, including Athena’s full profile, as it ran in SMACNA’s magazine. Reprinted with permission of SMACNA.
Download the feature (PDF) →Our thanks go to SMACNA and the SMACNews team for telling these stories, and to the women in this feature for the good company. If you are a woman thinking about a career in HVAC or building automation, our careers page is a good place to start, and students can look at our internships.
