Growing into her position

By Emma Peterson. 

Hear about one woman’s journey in the roofing industry to becoming one of Tremco’s first female sales managers. 

Not many people start out life knowing they want to be in the roofing industry, more often than not it’s something that seems to naturally fall into place. In this episode of Roofing Road Trips®, Heidi J. Ellsworth sits down with Desiree Huff of Tremco to talk about her journey in the industry. Desiree has worked with Tremco for around eight years now. She started as an administrative assistant to a sales representative in the Pacific Northwest. She cites getting to work closely with both the administrative and sales sides of the company as something that helped her grow and learn, sharing, “I was involved in pre-cons, sales calls, roofing inspections, customer meetings and so forth. I just had a lot of exposure to a lot of different areas of roofing which was great. I met with design professionals and roofing contractors and cooperative purchasing contacts, just everybody.”  

Meeting all of these people and learning from them helped Desiree see roofing as a career path. She, like many of us in the industry, did not anticipate being in the roofing industry. She had gotten her bachelor's degree in social and behavioral sciences. Once she started working with Tremco and seeing roofing as a huge part of her future, she was able to pursue getting her master's in business with a focus on construction management. Desiree explained that this was made possible because of Tremco’s tuition reimbursement program, saying, “They invested in me, in my education, they've provided career opportunities for me, so I feel like it's worth it for me to work hard for a company like Tremco. I'm just thankful for the opportunity of higher education, and then that opened up some additional doors.” 

From there she worked as a regional administrator and then a strategic business partner before becoming one of Tremco’s first female regional sales managers. And she loves working with sales. Desiree shared, “I love being there to support them and doing whatever I can to take each customer a little bit further down the path. I never thought that I would be in sales myself, but I love it. I love the excitement, I love learning from the failures, I love sharpening your skills to be better every single time that you go out the door. I love every piece of it.”  

Read the transcript or Listen to the entire podcast for more about Desiree and her work with Tremco.