Skills USA National Winners. From Left is Jennifer, Kayla, Rachel

I had the pleasure of meeting some of the National SkillsUSA winners while at NACE. Collision repair has been a male dominated industry, but more women are showing an interest and becoming recognized as champions in the collision industry.

I asked Gold Medal winner, Kayla E. Toncik to tell me a little about herself while at NACE 2009. Kayla was born and raised in Nazareth, Pennsylvania. She recently graduated from Nazareth Area High School and The Career Institute of Technology. While at CIT, Kayla studied Automotive Refinish Technology for the three years that she was there. Kayla participated in SkillsUSA placing second in all of the competitions she competed in. That is until her senior year. She had one last shot at trying to place first. This time she made it through local competition, which allowed her to move on to district competition, where she took first as well. Kayla was named the first female in the state of Pennsylvania to take first in the Automotive Refinish Technology competition in SkillsUSA history. This allowed Kayla to move on to National where she competed with students from all 50 states in America and 3 US territories. There Kayla took first place in the nation and the first female in the history of SkillsUSA to take first in non-traditional auto refinish competition.

Kayla plans to compete in SkillsWorld, 2011 in London, England, where she will be representing the USA. That is awesome and I wish Kayla the best of luck at this competition.

I asked Kayla what her future career goals were. She replied that having a family is important to her and she wants to become a Collision/Refinish teacher so she can help others succeed in life.

After meeting Kayla, I believe that her sincerity and desire to help others will allow her to reach any goal that she set for herself.