Being a Woman Leader in Construction with Jillian Bandes of Bandes Construction

Welcome back to the She’s Wild Podcast hosted by Nancy Surak! We are so excited to have Jillian Bandes as our guest for today’s episode. Jillian Bandes is a Construction Manager with Bandes Construction, a Florida based, third-generation construction firm, with a strong portfolio of commercial work for the private and public sectors. Jillian has experience in commercial and residential construction, as well as for-profit and nonprofit development.

In today’s episode Jillian walks us through the challenges of being a female general contractor in a male dominated industry and how she navigates her role with grace. Tune into the episode to learn more about Jillian, her career, and about her volunteer work through a nonprofit organization she leads known as YIMBY St. Pete. YIMBY St. Pete concentrates on public policy approaches that can fix the affordable housing crisis through ways that don’t cost taxpayers money.

Memorable Moments:
9:05- Especially as a GC, I'm almost positive that most of my clients don't ever have the opportunity to work with a female GC on some of their commercial jobs just in the nature of our market.

19:22 There is a national housing shortage. It's a major crisis everywhere. It is really acute in St. Pete, and so I think we have a really valuable role to play in the conversation.

21:27 Affordable housing impacts everyone, it impacts, you know, middle sized businesses like ours, impacts big corporations, it impacts you know, moms trying to get to, a grocery store near where their kids are, you know, it just hits every single part of our society.

23:20 In terms of my company, I primarily want to work with happy employees. I know, that's not always the business goal, you know, I want to make money, I want to have great clients and I really value some of the great clients that I have. But day in day out, the folks you are working with are the folks who you do business with who you rely on to get the jobs done. And I have just such incredible coworkers right now. They really make it worth getting up and doing what I do all day long worth it. I find it really engaging and kind of, they're entertaining in a lot of ways, you know that that lifts you up.

30:15 It took me so long to understand the mechanics of building and I feel like that learning process could have been shortened if I had majored in something that was a little different.

Connect with Nancy:
Instagram: https://instagram.com/nancysurak
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nancysurak/
Website: www.nancysurak.com

Connect with Jillian:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jillianbandes/
Website: https://www.bandesconstruction.com/
Email: [email protected]

Jullian's Book Recommendations:
Haruki Murakami Books on Amazon https://amzn.to/3vWdAe4
Pema Chödrön Books on Amazon https://amzn.to/3kWdpZU

She's WILD Sound Production by:
Luke Surak, Surak Productions: [email protected]