Judy De Vera remembers playing with Legos and 3D puzzles growing up but never thought those games translated to skills in the construction industry. She's since rearranged her thinking.

Her perception of working in construction changed while at the University of Southern California's business school, where she studied real estate. De Vera was hired as an intern in her final semester by Los Angeles general contractor L.E. Waters, and she realized on the job that her interest in puzzles matched up well with the problem-solving that’s required while working for a contractor.

"I realized it was something I was good at and didn't mind doing every day," De Vera said.

Now director of construction management at Hudson Pacific Properties, a Los Angeles real estate investment trust that owns millions of square feet of office buildings and soundstages on the West Coast, De Vera leads a team entirely made up of women, which is rare in the male-dominated construction world.

Only about 11% of the construction industry's workforce were women in 2020, despite women making up nearly half the nation's workers, according to the National Association of Women in Construction.

A mentor at L.E. Waters helped De Vera boost her career and taught her things such as setting a construction project schedule and how to communicate with contractors.

Armed with that training and experience, she moved to a role at Torrance-based Del Amo Construction and rose to project manager before being hired by Hudson Pacific.

De Vera took the Hudson Pacific position to achieve a better work-life balance as she has a family. She typically manages about five projects at a time, including upgrades to Hudson-owned building exteriors and common areas.

She also works with prospective tenants at Hudson buildings, showing them what their future offices may look like if they leased space.

She has two favorite projects that she has worked on at Hudson. The first was a tenant improvement project in downtown Los Angeles in the Fourth & Traction building, a creative office building converted from a former Coca-Cola warehouse.

The second was a project De Vera oversaw improving the exteriors at Hudson's corporate headquarters and adding planters and benches for tenants to relax and eat lunch.

"It's so gratifying to see," she said of watching people use the spaces she builds. "It's a really good feeling."

De Vera said she has seen more women join the construction industry since she started. At the beginning of her career, she was often the only woman in the room, but now there are more women at the table at job sites and in meetings.

De Vera would support her daughter, who's 9 years old, if she decided one day to get into construction. But De Vera isn't quite sure if her daughter would want to join the profession.

"She's not quite as into Legos as I was."