From Green Hat to Lead Hand and a Six-Figure Income

The companies powering America’s shale revolution truly “rock”

The male students of the CNX Foundation Mentorship Academy convened this past Friday at Deep Well Services’ training headquarters in beautiful Zelienople, Pa., to learn about a career in the oil and natural gas field services industry. Joining our host Deep Well was Evolution Well Services, the premier and most innovative completions company in the natural gas industry.

The leadership of both host companies invested their time throughout the day presenting and showing what a career in oil and natural gas field services looks like.

When I say the leadership, I mean the leadership. Deep Well CEO Mark Marmo, VP of Business Development John Sabo, and their wider leadership team participated through the day, continuously engaging the students. The Evolution team, led by Northeast Regional Manager Ryan McCann, exuded enthusiasm about their jobs and America’s energy industry that was impossible to miss. Spending the day with true leaders like these makes you extremely proud of our energy industry.

Students rotated across four hands-on modules, tours, and talks to get a better feel for the industry culture and the type of work encountered in these professions. What was special was having instructors covering topics and professions they know because they live it every day.

The compensation is, in a word, unrivaled.

An individual coming out of high school can start as a ‘green hat’ making $19/hour, enjoying a 401k savings plan, having health insurance, and receiving a $50 per diem to cover food expenses while working on the road.

Within 90 days, and with the focus to achieve proficiency with a checklist of on-the-job skills, the individual can progress from ‘green hat’ to ‘roughneck,’ where the pay increases substantially. With further skill progression, in a short period of time the ‘roughneck’ can achieve ‘lead hand’ status, where the all-in compensation levels are around the $100,000 level. None of it requiring a college degree; instead, what is required is a good work ethic, the ability to perform as part of a team, and the grit to keep at it and continually improve.

This was a full and busy day that offered three major takeaways:

First, the students are getting more engaged with hosts and topics as the Academy progresses. Lots of questions this week. I think we will see more than a few life careers determined over the course of this first Academy year. I sense a lot of the careers will be earning family-sustaining wages—providing financial independence and limitless opportunity.

Second, there are some stellar companies and leaders of those companies in western Pennsylvania that are too under-the-radar. Deep Well Services is a massive regional success story that should be trumpeted from the western Pennsylvania hilltops. Evolution Well Services is innovating completions and natural gas extraction to the point where no other energy source can compete with natural gas on an environmental basis (including much over-hyped wind and solar). Why don’t regional media, political leaders, and institutions make a bigger deal of these foundational pillars of our economy and quality of life?

Finally, American energy, its leading companies like Deep Well and Evolution, and its leaders rock. I was thoroughly convinced of that before this past week; but it’s always inspirational to see your convictions confirmed.

The Mentorship Academy is an initiative of CNX Foundation and part of CNX’s commitment to investing in its local community. Designed for high school students who do not plan to immediately attend a four-year college, the Academy is focused on providing urban and rural youth from economically disadvantaged regional Appalachian communities with greater opportunities—helping provide these young adults a bridge to family-sustaining careers. Following the mentorship program, students will have developed new relationships with peers and business leaders across western Pennsylvania, a new excitement for the region’s career opportunities and an understanding of how to pursue those careers.

Training Tomorrow’s Worker to Run Western PA’s Petrochemical Industry

Last week, the CNX Foundation Mentorship Academy spent two days at Community College of Beaver County (CCBC) alongside personnel from Shell to discuss career opportunities in the petrochemical industry. Petrochemicals are a massive and growing part of western Pennsylvania’s economy, anchored in part by Shell’s cracker facility that’s nearing completion after four years and billions of dollars invested in its construction.

The Shell cracker plant will take ethane produced in this region by the oil and gas industry and convert it into polyethylene, a polymer product used in virtually everything and by everyone.

Petrochemicals are yet another example of how carbon and its products drive quality of life, jobs, energy security, and strategic positioning of our nation.

The virtuous circle is powerful: the region’s natural gas industry, feeding the petrochemical plant, producing polyethylene pellets to feed downstream manufacturing plants that make carbon-based products, and those products being used in the food, medical, manufacturing, automotive, and construction industries. The stuff that drives regions, nations, and the world.

This amazing economic engine will not properly function without a pool of talented and trained workers. That’s where the faculty at CCBC come into the picture.

During our visits, Dean Goberish and the professors in the process technology school provided a series of lectures and hands-on exercises to allow Academy students to experience the skills and teamwork needed for success in a range of industrial career paths. Whether it was wiring a motor power center or building a scale model as part of a construction project team, these hands-on exercises did an incredible job of facilitating learning by doing.

Our two days at CCBC and with Shell also provided an interesting observation: Academy-participating students embrace a healthy mix of competitive drive and teamwork. During each exercise, the young men and women quickly adapted to work as a team while pushing each other to get a project successfully completed on time (and ahead of their competition on the other team). That’s the stuff that will serve an individual well, no matter what career path he or she embarks upon.

I would be remiss to not mention how incredibly impactful our regional community colleges are. CCBC and Community College of Allegheny County (CCAC) are two institutions this region desperately needs. They are also two organizations who never lost sight of their fiduciary duty and mission. Higher education could learn a lot from these two stellar entities. Spending time with either CCBC or CCAC is time well spent, and the Mentorship Academy plans on doing more of that in the future.

Next up for the Academy is a busy December to close out 2021. In addition to site visits and events, we will start developing the professional profile of each student: building a resume, conducting mock interviews, and constructing a social media profile for career pursuits. The goal is to have each student exit the program next summer with a portfolio they can use to secure a job and start on a career.

Thanksgiving is an opportunity for reflection and gratitude. This Turkey Day has me thinking about the Mentorship Academy.

It Takes More Than Sidney Crosby to Have a Hockey Night in Pittsburgh

The Mentorship Academy, an initiative of CNX Foundation, held its first combined male-female site visit at the PPG Paints Arena this past weekend. Our hosts were Kat, Gary, and Nick from the NHL’s Pittsburgh Penguins, ASM Global (arena operator) and Aramark (concessions manager). All three leaders and their organizations were amazing, especially considering the Academy visit was held on a busy weekend game night.

The students were provided a behind-the-scenes tour of the state-of-the-art PPG Paints Arena amidst a coordinated army of dedicated employees buzzing across the facility preparing for the 7 p.m. puck drop. It was a surreal experience to start the event in mid-afternoon with an empty, quiet arena and to watch it transform in a few short hours into a packed, noisy venue with 18,000 people in attendance.

Keeping those 18,000 spectators safe, comfortable, hydrated, fed, happy, and entertained through a three-hour hockey game is an epic task requiring the focus and dedication of hundreds of skilled and varied workers.

ASM employs a team of carpenters, riggers, engineers, security personnel, and affiliated staff to maintain and efficiently run the arena. Aramark depends on an army of skilled chefs, kitchen staff, cashiers, and wait staff to provide food and beverage services ranging from concessions to formal dining rooms. Both entities provide employees opportunities for growth within the ranks of the venue team as well as opportunity for advancement through transfer to venues in other cities across the country that ASM and Aramark operate or serve.

There was one overriding trait that Kat, Gary, and Nick emphasized as being key to a successful career in sports and entertainment or venue management: a passion for customer service. If a motivated young adult catches that bug, a career path in this industry has a very high ceiling.

In addition to this being the Academy’s first combined male-female visit, our visit to PPG Paints Arena was also the first time all Academy mentors gathered in one spot at the same time. I’ve said it before: the mentors are the second-most critical piece of the CNX Mentorship Academy effort, second only to the students. Watching the mentors in action that Saturday evening made me more convinced of that than ever.

November is a huge month for the CNX Mentorship Academy. We have scheduled visits to the Shell petrochemical facility (aka, the cracker) in Monaca, Pa., and the Beaver County Community College training facility. Both locations will open eyes to the scale and scope of one of the least understood major industries in western Pennsylvania: petrochemical manufacturing. Stay tuned for a report.

In the meantime, if you are interested in being a mentor in the CNX Mentorship Academy, if your business or organization would like to host a future site visit, or if you want to nominate a high school junior for the CNX Mentorship Academy’s next class in 2022-2023, please contact us at communityrelations@cnx.com.

Building Trades on a Roll: Female Academy Class Visits the Carpenters

The Mentorship Academy’s female class held its first career site visit this past week, and our hosts, Local 432 of the Eastern Atlantic States Regional Council of Carpenters, did not disappoint! Students’ heads were spinning after hearing about and seeing what the carpenters trade has to offer.

Carpenters lead presenters Alex and Rich walked the class through all the varied careers that membership in the Carpenters would offer: commercial carpentry, residential carpentry, heavy highway, pile driving, floor laying, cabinet making, and more. After questions, our class split into groups to tour the impressive and state-of-the-art carpenter training center off the Parkway West. The facility buzzed with activity all morning as the next generation of our region’s carpenters were refining their skills at different stations.

Guest speaker Jillian gave a powerful, personal talk to the class; explaining how she decided to join the Carpenters, what it’s like to be a woman in the craft, and how her profession allowed her to live her life as she desired. She shared a great video titled “Sisters in the Brotherhood” that everyone should watch (check it out here).

The class discussed the difference between a job and a career/profession, and how the latter sets the individual up for great wages, differentiated skills that are mobile and in demand, and a sense of pride in performing their skill daily.

We also reviewed how to evaluate different career options when it comes to wages, health care, pensions, 401ks, and profit sharing. Lots of new, technical terms were thrown out there and minds were swimming. However, over the course of the next few months these terms will become second nature to the students, and that knowledge will provide them a leg-up to stand out from the crowd when opportunity knocks.

Another great day for the Mentorship Academy. Now that we wrapped our first site visits for each class, we are going to make a few improvements and make the next visits even better (one of the most important: mandating pizza for lunch for all site visits from here on out!). Stay tuned for a report from our next experience. Till then…best.

Trades Showcase Rewarding Careers to Academy Students

The Mentorship Academy’s male class held its first career site visits this past week. Pittsburgh’s Steamfitters Local 449 and Iron Workers Local 3 were exceptional hosts for the day’s two sessions. Thanks to these hosts, our young adults enjoyed eye-opening experiences that will impact how they think about their career paths.

At the morning session, Tom and Mike from the Steamfitters spoke to the class about the different variations of career paths working in this wide-ranging building trade. Steamfitters do everything from welding and threading pipe to HVAC and power plant turbine installations. If it involves heating or cooling, a steamfitter is a go-to skill required to get the job built or maintained.

Students asked Tom and Mike a range of questions about pay, the training required to become certified, how jobs are scheduled, and the impressive suite of benefits that include healthcare, pension, and 401k. The class next went to the state-of-the-art training floor Local 441 built in Harmony, Pa., to do some hands-on welding under the supervision of Mike and team.

Following their introduction to welding, the class heard from Paul and Rick of Iron Workers Local 3 during a quick lunch in Pittsburgh’s Strip District. Anytime you see a construction crane, structural steel being erected, or the long cables of steel rebar being set for a big concrete pour, rest assured the iron workers are getting it done. If I had to describe the culture of Iron Workers Local 3 in one word, it would be ‘proud.’

Similar to the morning session, Paul and Rick fielded a flurry of questions from the class regarding a career in iron working. The class was escorted through different instructional stations where they learned about rigging, cranes, tying rebar, and scaling steel beams (we even had a student who made it to the top of the steel beam at the training station and rang the bell).

The day concluded with a pair of talks by Taili and Eric, special Academy guest speakers. Taili spoke about his life journey: from a basketball star and student leader at Pittsburgh’s Perry High, to incarcerated in federal prison for years, to a returning citizen living a productive and fulfilling life. His message hit home to the class: think carefully about what you choose as your identity/association in life and when circumstances change, make sure you refine that identity/association in positive ways. Listening to Taili had me thinking about ways to get his impactful message broadcast far beyond the Mentorship Academy classes.

We wrapped the day with an exercise by Eric where the students thought about the core attributes they want people in their lives to associate with them. And how those attributes could craft a life mission. Food for thought that will hopefully stay with the young adults through the year and beyond.

Key takeaways from this long but productive day: careers that pay family-sustaining wages get young adults’ attention and hand-on experiences (welding, scaling beams, tying rebar) excite. Dynamic site visits, such as today’s, are what the Mentorship Academy is all about. We look forward to continuing to showcase rewarding careers and exciting students for their bright future.