Her journey has not been without immense challenges.

In the first year of her apprenticeship, Aaliyah’s mum passed away, and she became the full-time guardian of her five-year-old sister. Balancing grief, caregiving responsibilities, and the demands of learning a trade required extraordinary resilience. At the same time, she often found herself navigating workplaces where young apprentices - particularly wāhine - were expected to simply figure things out on their own.

Through determination, community support, and programmes such as BCITO leadership initiatives and Mana Wāhine opportunities, Aaliyah built the confidence to keep moving forward.

Today, reaching her fourth year of apprenticeship while raising her sister stands as one of her proudest achievements. Along the way she has also received the Prime Minister’s Vocational Excellence Award for Carpentry, been awarded the BCITO Mana Wāhine Outward Bound Scholarship, and was a finalist for the Bunnings Trade Women Apprentice of the Year.

Within her workplaces, Aaliyah has shown that apprentices - especially women - bring strong work ethic, leadership, and resilience, even in challenging environments. She leads by example: staying positive, backing herself, and calling out behaviour that doesn’t support a healthy work culture.

Aaliyah credits much of her success to the support of her BCITO Training Advisor, Waine McMahon, whose guidance helped her stay on track during some of the toughest moments of her journey.

As a young Māori and Samoan woman in the trades, Aaliyah hopes her story shows other wāhine and rangatahi that there is a place for them in construction - and that resilience, whānau, and strong support networks can help build a powerful future.

“Resilience, whānau, and representation can change the future of our industry.”