I took a papermaking workshop at Penland last summer and have been making embossed panels out of paper pulp. It's all recycled computer paper and jun… - Jennifer Moss

I'm like, excuse me, what? But I didn't understand the seasonality, that kind of process. That the minute hand has to go all the way around the clock. You can't make a decision at 7 that affects 2. And so I just had to learn to slow down. That was probably the hardest transition."

I went into a supplier’s booth and stood there, ignored, for about 20 minutes, despite having 12 workers in the booth,” she explains. “It was right when the show floor opened, and they weren’t busy. I now call it the khakis and polo club because that’s what every one of those guys were wearing. It’s the traditional footprint of so many in our industry, but I don’t participate. I’m tattooed. I’m young. I’m female. So was like, ‘Okay, here’s a bias.’ So now I'm very sensitive to the gender gap in our industry.”

Don’t be afraid to put the guy with 30 years of experience on the bench and let him consult a group of younger folks to lead a project and challenge the status quo,” she advises. “If you are going to get people interested in this industry, it can’t continue to look how it’s always looked. It’s okay if everybody’s skin color is different at a table. It’s okay if half of the people in the board room are covered in tattoos. It’s okay if someone came from the cannabis industry and is now growing lettuce in a vertical farm. We’ve got to be able to cross over into the next stage of this industry’s evolution.”