Frontline UNSCRIPTED | Episode 5
Judaline Cassidy, union plumber, nonprofit founder, and CNN Champion for Change, joins Sarah Nicastro for a conversation about resilience, authentic allyship, and what it means to pay it forward in a career that has defined who she is.
Judaline Cassidy grew up in Trinidad and Tobago wanting to be a lawyer and Wonder Woman, in that order. When her great-grandmother passed and university became impossible, she chose the trades, specifically plumbing, on a calculation that would make her laugh telling it today:
“Electrical you get shocked. Plumbing you get wet.”
Thirty years later, she is one of the first women accepted into Plumbers Local 371 in Staten Island, New York, the first woman elected to the Examining Board of Plumbers Local No. 1, a CNN Champion for Change, an ENR 2025 Award of Excellence recipient, and the founder of Tools and Tiaras, a nonprofit dedicated to showing young girls just how creative, fulfilling, and lucrative a career in the trades can be.
This is Episode 5 of Frontline UNSCRIPTED, and it is one of the most important conversations the series has had.
Nothing Exists That We Use Without People Like Me
Judaline is unapologetic about the pride she takes in her career. When Sarah asks how she shifts the narrative around the trades, her answer is characteristically direct: give her more exposure.
She makes a case for a full rebrand of what plumbing represents. Stop putting plungers on business cards. Start talking about the gas line that cooked your mother’s food, the dental chair, the medical gas at the hospital, the temporary facilities built to protect communities during COVID. Plumbers, she argues, protect the health of nations and most people have simply never been told.
“We protect societies. We have been doing it for a long time. We are just as important as the doctors.” - Judaline Cassidy
The rebranding starts with representation. When Judaline walks into a school with her nails painted and her jewelry on, something shifts for the young girls in the room. They realize the choice is not between being themselves and having a career in the trades. That is a false binary and dismantling it is the work she has built her life around.
You Can Be Whatever You Want and Still Pick Up a Wrench
The Tools and Tiaras name is deliberate. It puts in the same breath the thing young girls are told they have to give up and the thing they’re told they can’t have. Judaline refuses both limits.
She tells the story of visiting a charter school of girls who assumed the trades would require them to stop being girly. She told them to check her Instagram. They did. They came back surprised. That surprise, that moment of seeing themselves reflected in someone who has made it work, is exactly why representation matters so much and why Judaline shows up the way she does.
“You don’t have to choose. If you wanna be that girly girl or if you wanna be that girl who dresses like a tomboy sometimes - you could be all of that and still have the money at the same time.” - Judaline Cassidy
What Authentic Allyship Actually Looks Like
No one gets anywhere alone. Judaline is clear about that and grateful for it. She talks about Brian Tatorra, the man she calls a “malie” (male ally), who saw her passion, spoke to the right people, and opened the door to Plumbers Local 371. But what made him different wasn’t just the professional advocacy. He became her friend. She went to his house. She met his family. She later worked on job sites with his sons.
That is the distinction Judaline draws between transactional allyship and the real thing. Authentic allyship is personal. It is intentional. It means not just opening a door but actually caring what happens once someone walks through it.
On job sites where she was the only woman and no one would speak to her, there was always one person who broke ranks. One person who started talking to her, who made everyone else realize she was funny and a hard worker and completely fine. She calls those people heroes and she challenges the listener: you can be that one. You do not have to follow the crowd.
“There was always one guy, one hero who would start talking to me and made everybody else realize - wow, she’s okay. Why are we not talking to her? And you can be that one if you’re listening.” - Judaline Cassidy
Intentionality Is Not Optional
Throughout the conversation, Judaline returns to a word: intentional. Inclusion does not happen by accident. It requires someone to look at a panel, a post, a room, and ask - is everyone represented here?
She does this herself, consistently. And she challenges service organizations to do the same. The pipeline of diverse frontline talent will not fix itself. Organizations have to create the conditions, the access, the visibility, the allyship, the belonging, that make it possible for people to choose the trades and stay.
Tools and Tiaras is Judaline’s contribution to that. The nonprofit has reached thousands of young girls with the simple, powerful message that a career in the trades can be theirs and it can be filled with pride, community, financial stability, and identity.
Paying it forward, for Judaline, is not a side project. It is the point.
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