Melissa Berg, Dome Construction

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Editor's note: As part of our Business of Pride publication every year, the Business Times honors a dozen or more Outstanding Voices honorees. Click here to read about our other 2023 honorees.

Melissa Berg says that her favorite place on earth is about 150 feet deep in the ocean.

"It's one of those places where no one can get a hold of you," said Berg, who picked up scuba diving some 15 years ago. "Some people like the mountains for their moment of peace and for feeling like they're smaller, I like the ocean."

Throughout her life, Berg has never shied away from taking the plunge into the unknown. From moving across the country to entering the construction industry as a young woman and outing herself as queer multiple times in adulthood – first to friends, then to family, then to colleagues— Berg has learned that with great risk comes great reward.

"Don't let someone else hold you back," said Berg. "I figured out that I can't really grow and lead as a person if I'm leaving pieces of myself behind."

Since 2020, Berg has served as the Director of Inclusion, Culture and Engagement at Dome, a role with which she aims to spread awareness and train Dome's employees around diversity and inclusion while building zero tolerance policies.

It's a position she successfully pitched to her fellow board members at Dome in an effort to address a longstanding need: targeted efforts to recruit and retain women and queer employees in construction.

"The industry needs to reset itself to welcome new people into it," Berg said.

Tell me about your experience of breaking into a male-dominated industry as a queer woman? My experience was actually a pretty good one, but I always did feel like there weren't enough women around. There weren't enough people of color around. There weren't enough LGBTQ folks around. I felt like I had to kind of keep myself in the closet early on in my career. I was already a young woman on the outside. I didn't want something else in the way. I now look back and regret that.

Have you seen a culture shift in the years that you've been in the industry? What changes wold you like to see? I would say for the first 15 years, not a lot changed, which was really disheartening. You kind of assumed that there'd be more women eventually. I didn't think that getting into like 2010 and past, that we'd still be struggling with numbers like less than 10%. When you talk about women, and when you talk about LGBTQ folks, it's like 1% or something like that. So there hasn't been much change. I think the barriers are that old school mindset: 'This is how we do things. This is a construction site and this is okay.' I think on the recruiting end, women land in construction because their families are in it or it was an accident, and that's where we really need to get in more at like the STEM levels and the high schools and the junior high's, talking to women about other folks about how there's a whole plethora of careers in construction that don't pertain to pounding the nails.

What are your top priorities in your new role? It starts with awareness, with educating and training folks. And then building no tolerance policies on job sites. There are things that still go on in construction sites that don't happen in offices for the last 20 plus years, so let's control that. We want to treat psychological safety almost like we treat physical safety, by creating an environment where people can meet and not feel harassed. I work a lot on trade partner diversity. So all the partners that we hire—like the plumbers and the electricians—we like to get engaged with companies that are women-owned and LGBTQ-owned. The other major thing is looking at all the processes we use as a business, from how we hire to how we interview and how we promote, and really dig in to figure out where the biases are that may be holding women or other historically underserved communities back.

Who was somebody that inspired you along the way? When I talk about mentors, I always tell people don't find one mentor— find 10 mentors and go to them for the different things you need. One person that really stands out to me is a woman by the name of Dr. Barbara Jackson ... she runs a women's leadership group bootcamp. And I went to her camp about five years ago. I was helping start a nonprofit for women in construction. She helped me see past the imposter syndrome: I was looking at the men above me and thinking that I need to act and be like them. She helped me reframe that. I realized I had amazing strengths and was already leading. She really helped make something click in me, that I am already leading and I can lead just like this, as the gay woman that I am.

When did you come out and how was that experience for you? I came out in different pieces over time. My good friends from high school probably knew earliest on and that was in my mid-20s. My parents came a little bit later. We aren't that tight, and we didn't have a lot of those conversations and it just kind of held off over time. I wasn't out at work for a long time. But at this point it is just unacceptable to me to walk into any area of my life and have to keep that a secret anymore.

What would you say to people who aren't at that point yet, and who might be struggling with that decision? It's just not worth it. I felt like I didn't get to bring my whole self to work in those early years. I maybe missed out on some tighter relationships. I figured out that I can't really grow and lead as a person if I'm leaving pieces of myself behind and what I would say to them is: don't let someone else hold you back.

What is an accomplishment that you're proud of? One thing that we worked on at Dome that I'm really proud of —I'm have my pin on today— is that we took our Dome logo, made it a rainbow, and made it into hardhat stickers and pins. Our superintendents on site have it as a hardhat sticker, we are giving that to everyone that's interacting on the site, to show that they're an ally and a safe space. I think those visuals, when you walk into an environment where you're feeling nervous or don't know if you're going to be accepted or not, are pretty important.

Director of inclusion, culture and engagement, Dome Construction