Meet Emily Pilloton

Emily likes to get dirty and build stuff. She is the founder of Girls Garage (formerly Project H Design, a nonprofit that teaches carpentry, welding, architecture, design, and activist art to give young women ages 9-18 the voice and toolbox to construct audacious futures and communities.

Q&A

What do you know for sure?   

The future will be built by girls and women.

What inspires you?   

This rising generation of young women is the fiercest, most creative, and most hopeful generation in history. I am constantly inspired not only by their ability to articulate their goals to change the world, but the precision with which they learn and apply the tools to actually build the world they want to see.

Who do you admire? 

My grandmothers, my mother, Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, Maxine Hong Kingston, Sandra Cisneros, and all artists who produce work straight from their soul.   

What’s the most outrageous thing you have ever done (that you can share)? 

Built a 2000-square-foot farmers market in rural North Carolina that was designed and physically constructed by my own high school students. 

A little known fact about yourself? 

I worked on my first construction site at age 16!

If you had to change careers what would you want to do? 

I would want to work construction as part of an all-female general contractor company. Although I supposed this wouldn’t be much of a career change. So… a modern dancer, writer, or an arborist.

What do you suck at? 

Multi-tasking, cooking + cleaning (to quote my mother, “Don’t be good at things you don’t like doing”), and all skate-related sports.

What do you geek out about? 

I’m unsurprisingly fascinated by all tools, from hand tools to power tools to large machinery: how they work, what they evolved from, how they’re made. I also love typography, crossword puzzles, and anything with hidden details that reveal a much more complex story.

Favorite quote? 

Freedom is something you take.

Want more? Follow Girls Garage on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, watch her TED Talk , documentary If You Build It, or buy her book.

Photo credit: Bryan Meltz