Confident, Skilled and Determined

Bailee Stiles has come a long way since she entered Fannin County High School as a ninth-grader. From being shy and “standoffish,” and having “no idea what I wanted to do,” Bailee spent her high school career transforming into a confident young woman and a skilled welder in the FCHS Class of 2025. Along the way, she became a SkillsUSA champion, her school’s SkillsUSA club president, and a welding fabricator at a local company, Blue Ridge Manufacturing, making more than $20 an hour.

“It’s wild to think back on,” she says.

Welding never crossed Bailee’s mind until she made a fortuitous connection in, of all places, a hair salon. It was her mother’s workplace, and she was hanging out there the week prior to her freshman year when she began chatting with a customer. It turned out the woman was a welder.

“I said, ‘What’s a welder?’” Bailee remembers. “I really didn’t know what that was. That was my first [notion of], ‘Oh, women can do something like this.’”

Another pivotal connection came the following week, when Bailee tagged along with a friend to a SkillsUSA club meeting. She met CTAE instructor Terry Flowers, who, as she recalls “walked up to me … and he was like, ‘Hey, you’re gonna weld.’ And I was like, ‘OK!’ And then he put me into an Occupational Safety class and I ended up loving it.”

From that point, Bailee began to learn welding under Flowers’ guidance, and she quickly “realized how much I loved it,” she says. “It’s something I know I can always get better at, and I strive to be the best at everything I do.”

As she built on her knowledge in the classroom and refined her skills in Flowers’ welding lab, the pair began to work toward preparing her for welding competitions. “At first, she didn’t do so good,” Flowers recalls. “There’s a lot of growing pains to go through. [But] she never would take no for an answer. If she wasn’t good enough at it, then she’s going to be [eventually]. She’s always working, she’s always pushing.”

Bailee spent the last three years of her high school career competing in a variety of welding fabrication competitions, including ones hosted by SkillsUSA and the Xcel mentoring network. Her team qualified for the SkillsUSA Georgia Championships in 2024 and 2025.

She’s also worked with classmates to fabricate custom firepits. That opportunity came about when Flowers and other Georgia high school welding instructors brought the project to their schools after learning the process at Construction Ready’s Camp T&I “Train the Trainer” summer gathering. Flowers found a market for the firepits at a local arts and crafts festival; from that project alone, the class raised more than $3,000 to help pay travel expenses for SkillsUSA competitions.

Looking back over Bailee’s high school journey, Flowers marvels at the confident young woman who has emerged. “If you could think of someone who has grown inside the program, she is picture-perfect of what you think would happen,” he says. “You could watch her transform into who she is now. … The key is the confidence that she’s built through increasing her skill set.”

Bailee says applying her welding lessons in SkillsUSA competitions also helped her become more of a leader to her peers. “It helped me speak out on what I know, because I’m confident in it,” she explains. “As club president, I knew I had to sound confident, because otherwise these kids weren’t going to listen me. They’re high school students just like me.”

Bailee’s growth continued when she began seeking a part-time job that would challenge her. She had been working in a minimum-wage position at her local rec department, but she recognized she “could do so much more,” she says. She explained her dilemma to Flowers, and he introduced her to Blue Ridge Manufacturing, a maker of commercial truck beds and bodies.

She aced the interview, was hired immediately, and has progressed through several pay raises over two years. She worked full-time and earned ample overtime pay in the summer of 2024. By the time her senior year began, she was driving a new Chevrolet pickup.

“She’s worked her way up into a really good spot,” says Flowers, who was honored as 2025 Teacher of the Year for both FCHS and entire Fannin County school district. The admiration between him and Bailee is mutual – Flowers, she says, “really pushed me to be the woman that I am today. I’m really grateful for him. He tells everybody this is going to be like a job – come in with your work stuff on and be ready.”

Bailee has taken dual-enrollment classes at the University of North Georgia-Blue Ridge and North Georgia Technical College. As a senior she was awarded a $10,000 scholarship from the Future of Our Trades Scholarship Foundation, a group of local residential builders who created the annual Blue Ridge Parade of Homes out of a desire to give back to their community. To date, the foundation has awarded $620,000 in scholarships.

Bailee’s next step is to join the International Brotherhood of Boiler Makers Local 454 in Chattanooga, TN, where she’ll work for the Tennessee Valley Authority as a boiler maker apprentice. Right out of high school, she can expect to make more than $40/hour en route to the journeyman level, where pay can increase to as much as $60/hour. Ultimately she hopes to travel the country as a boiler maker.

Wherever her career takes her, Bailee is grounded when her mask comes down and her torch is lit.

Welding, she says “is kind of calming in a way. Whenever I’m in the booth, I don’t worry about anything else. I just worry about what I’m doing and what I can control. I find peace in that.

“I love welding,” she adds. “10 out of 10, recommend.”