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Kyla Hagge worked in customer service until she changed careers and became a pipeline welder at SDG&E, the energy utility of San Diego, USA. Today, she is the second female welder in the company’s history and leads an entire team in a profession still dominated by men.
Swapping a call center headset for a welding mask is not a common change, but it was exactly the path of Kyla Hagge. After years in customer service and administrative roles, she transitioned to pipeline operations at SDG&E, the San Diego Gas & Electric, the energy utility of Southern California, USA. Her journey was shared by SDG&E Today, the company’s own news channel.
The change placed her in the company’s history books. Kyla became the second female welder in SDG&E’s history, following only Noelya Collon, the first, and today she leads her own team as a crew leader. In a traditionally male energy sector, it is a stereotype-breaking achievement built on technical competence, not rhetoric.
More than just a beautiful personal story, the case highlights an important point for the energy industry. Pipeline welding is one of the most critical and best-paid roles in the sector, and also one of the most closed to women. Seeing a professional move from customer service to leading a welding team speaks volumes about how doors are beginning to open.
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From Customer Service to Pipeline Welding
Kyla’s entry into the technical world was not by chance, but through a program. According to SDG&E, she joined the company through the “Intro to Construction Career,” a training initiative created in partnership with the San Diego Workforce Partnership to bring people from outside the sector into construction and operations careers. It was the bridge that connected customer service to the construction site.
Once inside, she focused on the gas department. Instead of seeking an administrative role similar to the one she already had, Kyla chose to stay in the operational area and wait for the chance to become a welder, even knowing it was a difficult path. “I am very happy to have stayed in the gas department and pursued the opportunity to become a welder when my turn came,” she told SDG&E.
This decision required courage to start almost from scratch. Leaving an office routine to learn a manual and technical trade means facing a steep learning curve, with no guarantee of success. But it was precisely this willingness to reinvent herself that transformed a customer service employee into a qualified pipeline welder.
Her case fits into a growing movement. More and more people are leaving office and customer service jobs for technical careers, attracted by better salaries, stability, and the satisfaction of concrete work done with their own hands. Kyla joined this wave before it became a trend and proved that change is possible even without prior experience in the field.
The 2nd Female Welder in SDG&E’s History
The achievement is significant because it is rare. SDG&E has over 140 years of history, and Kyla is only the second woman to become a welder at the company, following Noelya Collon, who paved the way as the first. In over a century of operation, very few women have held this position.
The rarity is not just within the company, but in the entire sector. American market surveys indicate that about 5% of welders in the United States are women, a small number that highlights the size of the cultural and professional barrier. Each new female welder, in this context, is an exception that helps push the average up.
That is why the label of “second in history” carries a great symbolism. It is not just an internal statistic of the San Diego utility company, but a sign that a historically male profession is gradually becoming less exclusive to men. Kyla has become a reference for other women considering following the same path.
There is also a practical side that is often forgotten. In an energy utility company, the position of welder usually comes with a robust salary, career plan, and stability, the kind that many office jobs do not offer. For Kyla, the risky bet of starting over was not only a personal achievement but also a leap in quality of life and income.
Who was the first: the path opened by Noelya Collon
To understand Kyla’s story, it is necessary to know who came before. Noelya Collon joined SDG&E as a gas construction assistant and, realizing that no woman had completed the welding school at the company, decided to be the first to try. Her determination led her from assistant to pioneering welder, opening the door that Kyla would later cross.
The pioneering spirit also became a team effort. Noelya joined the first all-female gas team at SDG&E, which, according to 10News, went on to compete in the utility company’s traditional skills rodeo, an internal competition that tests the field teams’ dexterity. It was the first time in over 140 years that an all-women team entered the competition.
Noelya’s quote sums up the spirit of both women. “It’s about showing my children and other women that we are capable of doing difficult things,” said the company’s first female welder. It is on this same ground, opened by her, that Kyla built her own career and reached leadership.
What is welding a gas pipeline and why is it so difficult
Welding a gas pipeline is not the same as welding any metal piece. The job requires joining pipes that will transport gas under pressure, making each weld bead a matter of safety, not just finishing. A tiny flaw can become a leak, so the level of precision required is extremely high from start to finish.
That’s why the training is tough and selective. The welding school combines physical effort, technical reading, and hours of practice until the hand gains steadiness, and fails those who do not meet the required standard. “Welding school was difficult, mentally and physically, but it was an extremely rewarding experience,” Kyla said, describing the challenge she faced to qualify.
In daily life, the craft mixes strength and delicacy. Gas teams cut pipes, fit polyethylene pipes into metal pipes, and connect everything to the main distribution lines, always following strict quality standards. It is a job that combines body and technique, and does not forgive haste or distraction.
There is also the emotional weight of being an exception. Learning a difficult craft is tough in itself, and doing it as one of the very few women in the room increases the pressure. Kyla recalls that the support from colleagues was decisive: “While I was in welding school, I received many encouraging messages and calls from people in the company. This support kept me motivated and reminded me of the final goal.”
Why welding is critical for gas safety
Kyla’s role is at the heart of energy infrastructure. Pipelines are the arteries that carry natural gas from the main networks to homes, businesses, and industries, and each welded joint must withstand pressure, temperature variations, and decades of use. Without quality welding, there is no safe gas distribution.
That’s why the utility treats welding as a maximum safety item. Companies like SDG&E maintain strict pipeline integrity programs, with constant inspection, testing, and maintenance, and welders are a central piece in this system. The work Kyla performs is, in practice, one of the last barriers between the gas and an accident.
This strategic character values the profession. At a time when the energy sector is discussing transition, safety, and modernization of networks, qualified technical labor has become scarce and in demand. Well-trained pipeline welders, men or women, are precisely the type of professional the market lacks, making stories like Kyla’s even more relevant.
A well-paid craft in demand worldwide
Welding is one of those professions that debunks the idea that only a university degree guarantees a future. Well-paid and almost always in demand, it requires intense technical training, but not a four-year course, making it a relatively quick entry point to a solid career. In many places, a qualified welder earns more than professionals with higher education.
In the energy sector, demand is still greater than supply. A large part of the technical workforce is aging and retiring, while few young people are entering to replace it, creating a bottleneck that worries utilities and contractors. There is a lack of qualified hands to build and maintain pipelines, electrical networks, and other structures that support energy.
It is precisely in this gap that stories like Kyla’s gain strategic importance. By bringing women and people from other areas into welding, the sector practically doubles the size of the available team and addresses the labor shortage through a path that has always been in sight but was little used. Diversity here is also efficiency.
For those seeking a fresh start, the message is encouraging. Kyla’s journey shows that it is possible to enter a profession in demand, be well-paid, and even grow into leadership, even starting without any technical experience. In a world of unstable jobs, mastering pipeline welding has become a kind of career insurance.
From Welder to Team Leader
Kyla’s journey did not stop at the welding bench. Today, she works as a team leader, responsible for coordinating work on large-scale projects, ensuring that the works are completed efficiently and safely. In just a few years, she went from learning the trade to guiding her colleagues in the field.
Leading a gas crew is a new layer of responsibility. Besides welding, she needs to plan, distribute tasks, manage deadlines, and, above all, ensure the safety of all team members. It is a role that requires both technical mastery and management skills, rarely associated, in common imagination, with a former call center attendant.
Kyla also uses her position to open doors for others. According to SDG&E, she participates in diversity and inclusion initiatives at the company and sees her own opportunities as a way to inspire those who come after. “I was able to meet, learn, and collaborate with so many colleagues who share the same values at work,” she said about what she gained along the way.
Leading as a woman also sends a silent message. When a field team is led by someone who was once the exception in the room, the next woman who arrives finds a slightly less hostile environment and a concrete example of how far one can go. This is how, in the day-to-day practice, a stereotype is dismantled.
Breaking the Stereotype in the Energy Sector
Kyla’s case is part of a larger movement. The energy sector, from distributors to pipeline contractors, has always been a male-dominated environment, especially in field roles. Seeing women taking on welding and team leadership is a recent and still timid, but concrete change.
Training programs have been the key to this turnaround. Initiatives like “Intro to Construction Career,” which brought Kyla into the technical area, show that the barrier is often in access, not capability. When companies and governments create bridges for women to enter industrial careers, the results appear.
Representation, in this scenario, becomes fuel. Every welder or team leader that appears serves as an example for girls and women who had never imagined themselves in that role. As a colleague of Kyla summarized in another report from the utility company, leadership and work ethic have no gender, and it is this idea that stories like hers help to spread.
What Brazil has to do with it: women in energy and gas
The discussion arrives in Brazil in full force. The country has a robust oil and gas industry, with pipelines, distributors, and an industrial park that depend on qualified welders and technicians, in roles historically occupied by men. The female presence in these field positions is still small, but it grows year by year.
Brazilian energy companies are already pursuing this change. Petrobras, gas distributors, and companies in the electric sector have been creating programs to attract and train women in technical areas, from the factory floor to platform operations, following the same logic as the program that paved the way for Kyla. The challenge is to turn these initiatives into significant numbers.
There is also a clear economic opportunity. Brazil faces a shortage of specialized technical labor, and truly opening welding and pipeline maintenance professions to women expands the available workforce precisely where professionals are lacking. Diversity, in this case, is not only social justice, but also a solution to a bottleneck in the energy sector.
In the end, the lesson from San Diego applies anywhere. Kyla Hagge’s journey shows that with training, opportunity, and support, a woman can go from customer service to leading a pipeline welding team. It’s the kind of story that the Brazilian energy sector can not only applaud but also replicate.
And you, did you know a story like this?
Kyla Hagge’s journey proves that no stereotype is definitive: she switched from customer service to pipeline welding, became the second female welder in the history of San Diego’s energy utility, and today leads an entire team in one of the most technical and male-dominated trades in the sector.
And you, do you think Brazil is providing enough space for women in technical energy professions, like pipeline welding? Share in the comments if you know any woman who has broken this type of barrier and what is still needed for stories like Kyla’s to become common here.
