“Helping People Succeed”: Alumni Revive Gallup’s Native Workforce

Five Thomas Aquinas College alumni are helping to rebuild the local workforce, reinspire interest in blue-collar trades, and support the Native American community in Gallup, New Mexico, and its surrounding cities. 

“Gallup is an area with a lot of poverty and a struggling workforce,” says Tom Macik (’19), program administrator and instructor for the Greater Gallup Industrial Workforce Program (IWP). “It’s the bottom of the barrel for education: We’re dealing with adults who can’t do basic math. Many of these people have never even worked a long-term job before.”

As employers in the Greater Gallup area tried desperately to fill necessary positions with qualified workers, the IWP team saw an opportunity to help the whole community. IWP aims to provide under-skilled workers with training in the blue-collar trades, thereby opening up new employment possibilities for both the program’s graduates and local industrial businesses. “We work with our students, give them a vision and some professional training, and set them up for success as best we can,” explains Mr. Macik. 

The Greater Gallup Economic Development Corporation initially launched IWP in 2019, and, two years later, the Southwest Indian Foundation (SWIF) took over its operation. Since then, five Thomas Aquinas College alumni have joined the program and are heavily involved with its development and management, including Mr. Macik, Jeremy Boucher (’03) as the director of operations, Mark (Ben) Macik (’17) as the construction manager, Liam McCarthy (’18) as the program manager and instructor, and Brian Venegas (’19) as the web designer.

Together, they helped build the program into what it is today. IWP offers training programs for construction, heavy equipment and welding, and automotive service. Over the course of 6 to 12 weeks, their students — primarily Native American adults of all ages — learn hands-on skills for their trade, as well as financial literacy, teamwork, professional workplace skills, and critical thinking.

“We get to show our students that you can take a problem, break it down and analyze it, understand it, and actually solve it,” says Mr. Macik. “We also talk about virtue a lot, especially in the context of good work ethic. Our TAC education has really helped us distill what we know into concepts that someone with zero exposure to philosophy, theology, or even math, can understand. It’s a challenge, but so rewarding.”

In the past year and a half, IWP has expanded to include an internship program for high school seniors, a “Skillbridge” transition program for active-duty service members, and training for prison inmates at a local correction facility. Its construction program builds houses for low-income members of the Navajo Nation. Eventually, it hopes to add more trades to its course lineup, especially silversmithing. “Native American jewelry is a huge part of Gallup’s economy,” Mr. Macik explains. “There’s almost no training, because it’s all done by families, and since many of the kids aren’t learning it, the shops are running out of silversmiths. We would love to help preserve this incredible part of Navajo culture.”

With the expansion of its program, IWP has garnered impressive results. In 2024, it received the Excellence Award in Workforce Development from the Construction Users Roundtable. IWP’s greatest accomplishment, however, is found in the success of its graduates, 75 percent of whom find employment after graduation.

“One of our graduates had worked at McDonald’s forever before enrolling in our automotive program; now she’s working at a Ford dealership and loves it,” says Mr. Macik. “We’ve had some pretty awesome success stories so far, and as we continue to grow, I know we’ll see more. That’s what it’s all about: helping people succeed."