• Posted: February 19, 2021
• better careers, better communities, better construction, LiveWire Construction, YourTube video

Shon Harris and Angela Drexel decided to take a leap of faith when they stopped working for others and founded LiveWire Construction. After coming up through the apprenticeship program, they knew they had the skills to build an electrical construction firm that could take on large projects and outperform their competitors. But when they started trying to make that dream come to fruition, they never realized that their office in Shon’s basement would turn into the multi-million dollar company it is today in such a short period of time.

Harris and Drexel met on a job site early in both of their careers, when Drexel was just six months out of school. After a somewhat heated disagreement about Drexel’s use of a specific tool, Drexel put Harris in his place as just a “junior foreman.” He responded, “As a matter of fact, I am the ‘junior foreman.’ And I don’t like you!” before storming out.

Despite a rocky start, Harris saw something in Drexel, and he knew she was an asset to any team she worked on. Later as foreman on other projects, he would bring her in knowing the job was going to get done right.

When Harris earned his supervising electrician license with the City of Chicago, he felt like he finally had the opportunity to strike out on his own and build his own business. Scraping all the money he could from his pension, his family, and his new partner, Drexel, he said, “I’m betting on myself. Let’s see where this goes.” In 2006, LiveWire was born, carrying on a legacy of Black-owned electrical contractors in Cook County that stretches back almost 100 years to the founding of Taylor Electric in 1922.

Neither Harris nor Drexel have had a lot of mentors to look up to as African-American business owners in the construction field. “We’ve had to rely on each other quite a bit and encourage each other to be formidable against the world,” Drexel explained. However, that self-reliance has inspired them to be the mentors they didn’t have coming up in the business.

As one of the founding members of Black Contractors Owners and Executives, LiveWire lives by its mission to “empower a team of diverse leaders.” Harris and Drexel are passionate about investing time and resources in the communities they serve, and in those they employ. They work tirelessly to “homegrow” talent on their team to build their company’s strength through diversity.

LiveWire is also passionate about removing the stigma about jobs in the skilled trades. Aware that trades are often seen as a lesser alternative to a college education, Harris and Drexel are living embodiments that it simply isn’t true. Harris and Drexel both actively work to, as Harris stated, “get young people, minorities, into the trade and not look at trades as, ‘Well, you didn’t go to college, so go do this.’ This is actually a very good way to make a living and a very good way to do a deep dive into becoming a man or a woman.”

Drexel added, “I really feel like the narrative around that [the stigma of trade work] needs to change and people need to see that there’s nothing demeaning about working with your hands and building something. They can automate a lot of things, but they will never automate a human building something.”

For most tradespeople, LiveWire included, that’s the best part of the job — knowing you built something with your hands, knowing you’re responsible for the existence of something people use every day. As Harris noted, “Being able to step back, hit that light switch and that light comes on, or this motor comes on, or this building comes on — I mean, the feeling you get from that sense of accomplishment? That’s a very, very good feeling.”

LiveWire wants others to have that sense of accomplishment as well. That’s why they give back and build capacity within their own communities. As Harris put it, “The seed has to get planted somewhere. The numbers [of African Americans in trades] are where they are because we haven’t done a good job making sure that those seeds have been planted well in the Black and Brown communities.” That’s why LiveWire makes it part of their mission to plant the seeds and encourage young people to look at trades as more than just a fallback.

Drexel gives back in other ways, too. As an African-American woman in a male-dominated industry, she also fills the role of mentor for people because she felt she lacked mentors as she came up through the industry. Drexel prepared to become an IBEW Local 134 apprentice through Chicago Women in Trades’ Technical Opportunities Program, which exposes women to the career potential that exists in the trades and prepares them to make the transition to apprenticeship. Drexel continues to give back to the program by talking to participants about opportunities that are available to them as women in the field.

From their very first basement office to their current success, LiveWire has dedicated itself to being a building block in the community. As an example of innovation and community awareness, LiveWire is not only excelling as one of Chicagoland’s Black-owned electrical contracting companies through better construction for customers like ComEd, Chrysler, AT&T and more, but ensuring that better careers are available to the next generation.

To learn more about LiveWire Construction, watch Powering Chicago’s interview with Shon Harris & Angela Drexel and visit their website. To find additional MBE-certified electrical contractors in Cook County, search our Find a Contractor database.