Terri Stave accepts the 2026 Tradeswomen Build Nations Lifetime Achievement Award in Houston. (photo courtesy NABTU)
Terri Stave almost skipped this year’s Tradeswomen Build Nations convention. Instead, she came home with a Lifetime Achievement Award from the nation’s largest annual gathering of union tradeswomen in Houston last month.
The award, presented Oct. 11 in front of about 5,000 conventiongoers, came as a surprise to Stave. The retired member of Elevator Constructors (IUEC) Local 9 said she was overwhelmed by the moment, given that her mother had died just nine days before.
But it came as no surprise to people who have worked alongside Stave in the field, at the union hall or in her advocacy efforts with Women Building Success, a labor-backed nonprofit organization that promotes Minnesota tradeswomen.
“Terri’s contributions go far beyond the work she has done as a business representative,” Local 9 Business Manager Ryan Parkos said. “She has helped shape our local union, strengthened our trade and created a legacy that will continue to influence generations of elevator constructors for years to come.”
Stave became the first woman sworn in as business agent of an IUEC local – not only Local 9, but anywhere in the U.S. and Canada – after winning an election in 2015. More recently, she became the first female member to retire out of Local 9.
Throughout her career and even into retirement, Parkos said, Stave sought opportunities to help other women thrive in the construction trades, too.
“Terri Stave’s legacy is about more than being the first,” Parkos said. “It is about what that first represents, the doors it opens, the example it sets and the opportunities it creates for those who follow. History will remember her achievement, but the true measure of its impact will be seen in the women who enter our trade, the members who step into leadership and the generations of elevator constructors who benefit from a union that continues to grow stronger and more inclusive.”
Stave, who lives in Baldwin, Wis., reflected on her career, the challenges facing women working in the trades and what the national recognition means to her in this interview, which has been edited for length and clarity.
UA: How did you find out you were going to receive the Lifetime Achievement Award?
TS: I didn’t find out until there were 5,000 people sitting there. It was a big plenary in a great big room with over 5,000 women and advocates in attendance, and Sean McGarvey (president of North America’s Building Trades Unions) is the guy who gave me the award.
UA: You didn’t know you had been nominated?
TS: I did not. I wasn’t going to go this year because my mother passed away, but I didn’t get around to canceling my flight. I’d talked to my mother two weeks before, and my mother knows I’ve gone every year since 2014. I told her I was going to cancel my flight, and she told me I should go. I said, “We’ll see, mom.”
My mother took a turn pretty fast. We called hospice on Wednesday, they brought the bed Thursday and she passed away on Friday. So I talked to my siblings, and they said why don’t you just go because there’s nothing you can do here right now. And I thought it would probably be good to get away for a bit.
(photo courtesy NABTU)
UA: The emotions must have been overwhelming. Did you have to say something?
TS: It was almost like I couldn’t keep it together. They give you the podium, and I’m like, “Oh my God.” The conference center is huge – they can’t have it at a hotel any more, it’s gotten too big. I thanked NABTU, I thanked the IUEC and then I kind of broke down and told them that my mother had passed away. It was pretty emotional, pretty overwhelming, but what an honor. You have so many people who could be chosen, and they chose me.
UA: What kind of an influence was your mother on your career path?
TS: My mother had two girls that were both in the elevator trades. My older sister was also a union mechanic for 15 years. My mother was very supportive, and my father was a union carpenter. She taught me to have a great work ethic, and always wanted us to help others. And that’s what you’re doing as a business agent.
UA: Looking back, what made you want to serve your local as an agent?
TS: I had started going to meetings seven or eight years earlier, and got my start as the door warden. That’s a position nobody wants, right? I ran for door warden and got to meet people, and then it’s, “Why don’t you run for executive board?” I served two terms there and became the chair, and it was actually the business manager at the time, Dave Osrud, who said, “Why don’t you run for business rep?”
I never looked at anything with the elevator trade as being the only female. I just went and did my job. So when I ran for business rep and beat the incumbent by quite a few votes, there were some situations where I didn’t look at it that way but other people did. I didn’t know I was the first female until after I got the role. Dave Osrud is like, “I think you’re the first female. You know you’re going to go to meetings and be the only female in the room?” And I told him it’s been that way my whole career. That was nothing new to me.
UA: Were there challenges?
TS: I did have a tough time. People came out of the woodwork after I got in that role, and I heard things like, they didn’t want a woman running the local and whatever. I couldn’t fight that. I couldn’t fight being a female. And I figured that I knew how to fix elevators when I went in there, so I just went back and fixed elevators.
At the time I was very angry about it. But you know what? I pulled up my bootstraps, and I went to Tradeswomen Build Nations the year after that just to show the young generation coming in that if you get knocked down, you just pull yourself back up and keep going. I think that was probably the most important conference that I went to.
UA: Spaces like Tradeswomen Build Nations reflect an intentional investment from Building Trades unions like yours in making their organizations more welcoming and diverse. At a time when a lot of organizations are pulling back from those investments, why does this work remain important?
TS: If you can do the job, why wouldn’t a woman want to have the great income, the great benefits? The trades give opportunities to women and men to live a great life, a comfortable life with great benefits and great pay. If you work hard and go to work every day, you can succeed. It shouldn’t matter if you’re male, female, black, white. The trades offer a career.
By having things like Tradeswomen Build Nations, you meet people who are the only woman in their local. It gives the women an avenue to communicate and ask questions and find information they might be too afraid to ask their business manager. It makes them feel like they’re not alone.
UA: When did you feel like you knew you belonged?
TS: When I started, I was 19 years old. I think it takes you a good 10 years until you go, “I think I’ve got this. I can fix an elevator.” Yes, I ran across problems being a female in the trades, but I tried to never take it home. I figured I had just as much right to be there and work hard as the next person. I don’t even know that I ever wanted to quit when I was young. I did as a business agent, though. You work all day on an elevator, and you can see what you fixed. You work all day as an agent – on the phones, answering emails – and then you go, what’d I do today? There are no thank-you’s.
UA: Colleagues say your leadership has made the craft more inclusive. How have you tried to do that, and what work remains to be done?
TS: I think just going to meetings. Just being there, that’s half the battle. But I would approach any of the apprentices – I don’t care if it’s male or females. I think people see you, and communicating with people is the best thing you can do. I want them to see that someone can start and finish and have a career in the elevator trade. I want them to think, “Well, if Terri can do it …”
– Michael Moore, UA editor
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