Still Building America: Lashanna Lintamo aka The Fashion Welder

In this episode of Still Building America, we introduce you to Lashanna Lintamo, a northern California-based freelance ironworker who also has a passion for introducing women to welding and other metal manufacturing trades.

Lashanna hails from a long line of metalworkers. Her great-great-great grandfather was an enslaved blacksmith, her great-grandmother a shipbuilder in World War II, and her grandfather was a welder for the U.S. Army during World War II. With that deep generational influence, she works to continue passing on the torch and showing what’s possible to the next generation of women welders.

“Our schools are not made for our entrepreneurs. It’s about following a system. But it’s just not for me because the system is not for me,” she says in the interview. “I’m not expected to be a multi-certified black female welder, a foreman, leading work, driving heavy equipment, driving company trucks, in there giving advice on which we should do, fixing problems on this massive building - that’s not supposed to be expected of me.”

She also shows us her creative side and passion for fashion, showing women that they can be covered in molten metal all day but also be glamorous and dripping with confidence. Lintamo’s entrepreneurial spirit and drive to help others are contagious.

You can follow Lashanna on YouTube and Instagram.

Check out more from our Still Building America series.