Nicole Espeland already had a career. It just wasn’t the right one for her.
An interest in welding offered the possibility of a different path, but Espeland wasn’t sure she had the courage to follow it. “I was scared to start over and start something new that I had no knowledge in,” she said. “(And) I had concerns about being a woman in a male-dominated industry.”
According to the American Welding Society, only about 5 percent of professional welders in the U.S. are women but the number is increasing.
