Priya Raghavan spent her twenties answering office phones and her evenings in Northfield's workshop, learning to bend conduit after dark. Nine years later she leads a four-person solar installation crew and has put panels on more than two hundred roofs across the county.
Nights at the bench
“The evening workshop saved me,” Priya says plainly. “I could not afford to quit my job, so I trained from seven to ten, three nights a week, for a year. My tutor stayed late every single time.” Her first paid job — rewiring a bakery — came from a forum introduction by a 2009 graduate who needed “someone careful on old buildings.”
Roofs, crews and what's next
Priya now hires from the same evening cohorts she once sat in, and she mentors two trainees through the association's scholarship scheme. Her rule for newcomers: learn the regulations like scripture, then learn the customer like family.
