As we celebrate Women’s History Month and Women in Construction Week, Plumbing & Mechanical is shining the spotlight on 10 influential women who are leading the plumbing industry to great success.

Meet Devynn Thompson, CFO and Operations Manager of Thompson Family Plumbing

What made you choose a career in the plumbing industry?

DT: Girls typically don't grow up saying, "When I grow up, I want be a plumber." But I was lucky enough to get into the trades through my amazing husband. He became a plumber at a young age, didn't have a lot of opportunity. College really wasn't a thing for him, and he was building a lot of momentum for himself. He came to me and said, "Hey, I really want to go and get my contractor's license. I think that this is something I can do for myself." He was doing really well with his sales and with his customer service. I thought at that time, well, we have three kids, we have a mortgage. I was an office manager for a dental office. I thought, well, why would I want to get involved? But the more I thought about it, I really reassessed what my husband was telling me as his supportive partner — he's telling me this is a dream that he has and I want to support that dream.

It's really scary knowing, once you start your own business, you don't have the backing of other people. Now, once you hire employees, which I think is a huge privilege, now we have this responsibility of making sure we can provide a livelihood for another household. So going into it, I was very apprehensive, very nervous, but I thought, you know what? I really trust my husband. I really trust God. Let's take this jump. So we started our company 10 and a half years ago and we haven't looked back. I'm telling you, the more and more I learned about the trades and the amazing knowledgeable people that I learned from, I couldn't be happier that God led me into this direction.

What has been the most rewarding/proudest aspect of your career in the plumbing industry?

DT: What brings me the most happiness is seeing young individuals come into the trade and create a career for themselves. I love seeing young men and women come in and grow. My office manager in California, she started out as a CSR five and a half years ago. She has grown into an amazing individual to where now, I'm getting ready to turn over my operations position over to her in my California location.

What gives me the biggest pride and pleasure of all of this is creating career paths and elevating other people's lives. I always like to ask my employees, "What's a goal you have for yourself?" A lot of the responses I get are things like, "I want to buy a house. I want to get a better car for my family." So when we're taking all of these things into consideration, we're always talking about how we're going to build ourselves into achieving these things together, and not one person in the organization is on their own. So for me, it's simply just elevating people's lives.

We got to understand what's driving them and why they're getting up and going to work every day. If you are just expecting people to come in and clock in and just do their job and never really create that one-on-one connection with them, this isn't going to be an actual organization. You're not going to have culture. Morale is going to be down because at the end of the day, all the employees going to feel like is a number. That's not how we are here. For me, my employees are my coworkers. I look at them as being an extension of bringing their collective genius into the organization. I want to learn as much as I can from these amazing people, and they want to learn as much as they can from me. And by doing that, we're totally open about what we want to achieve, and we want to help each other get there.

What challenges do women face in this profession? Why aren’t there more women in plumbing? How can we increase the number of women in the industry?

DT: The real challenge is imposter syndrome. I don't think that there's any actual challenges within the fields, the trades themselves. It's something internally within ourselves as a woman thinking, “Oh my gosh, I'm intimidated that I have to go in this male-dominated industry.” But for me, I never really thought about it like that. I thought of it as I would love the opportunity to grow, learn, better myself as an individual and see what I can bring into the trades. I get people contacting me from all over the world, and they're always asking me, "Hey, I need your advice. I really want to start this business, but I'm worried about this." They're living on the other side of fear instead of being positive and not giving yourself an option to fail, they're living on the “what ifs.” They're already being conscientious of, “What if I don't get the respect from my male team? What if I don't have anybody following my advice?” My thing is that, if I were a man, it wouldn't matter. I'm already going to expect people to give me respect. I've always just kind of been a very directive person in that way. So my best advice to women is don't ever second guess yourself, and don't ever allow someone to feel like you're not capable of doing something. Because God gave me the same five fingers, the same two ears, the same two eyes, to do the same job that anybody else is doing, regardless of my gender, my creed, my race, my religion, nothing. So girlfriend, if you feel like you're not capable of doing something, that's on you, that's not on them.

What advice do you have for prospective women considering entering the plumbing industry?

DT: Find like-minded women. Go on social media. I have met the most incredible women on social media. One of my favorite person, her name is Danielle. You can find her on Instagram @thelittlestplumber. She is in there doing it every single day. Find people that are living it, doing it and become friends with them. Don't be afraid to try to make connections with people because you are fearful of saying, "I don't have all the answers." Just make yourself vulnerable and start connecting with other people in the trades. Reach out, start going to business networking classes. Start asking questions. Google “Who's the baddest bitch in plumbing right now?” Hopefully, my name comes up, I would love that.

That's something I want to achieve for myself. I want to make a difference. I want to be a trailblazer for young women out there, and I want to show them that there are opportunities. So continue to make connections. Put yourself in rooms with people smarter than you, put yourself in rooms and give yourself the opportunity. And if you're afraid to do something, for me, that's telling me I absolutely need to do it because I'm scared. Because nobody's going to grow when you're comfortable, go and do the things that you're afraid of.

What’s one thing nobody knows about you?

DT: I had double corrective jaw surgery five and a half years ago. I was having TMJ problems and was going to my dentist first saying, "Hey, I'm getting headaches. My mouth hurts. Send me for MRI." They thought I might have a brain tumor. It was really scary because I was having a lot of high stress. This was in the early times of my business, so I'm learning as I go, I'm taking on all these responsibilities. I'm still trying to be a good mom, getting these headaches, and they're like, "Great news, no brain tumor." Thank you, Jesus. But they were saying, "You're clenching your teeth so badly that you're actually going to start breaking your teeth."

I learned that I had somewhat of a non-skeletal underbite, which means if you would look at me, you wouldn't see an underbite. But when you actually look at the occlusion of my teeth, I had issues there. So I got braces put back on me at 32 years old. It was really cute, I loved it. Not! It was the worst.

I went forward with having upper and lower corrective jaw surgery, and it was one of the scariest things that I've ever done. I feel like now, I'm Kanye West. He has a whole song about this, it's called "Through the Wire." Kanye West had the same surgery that I had. But to me, it's more like I have these plates in my screws in my face, and it's just a reminder of I can take on anything. If I can overcome getting my jaw cut off and put back onto my face, I can take on anything in the world.