When Carol J. Ornelas, CEO of Stockton-based Visionary Home Builders of California, started her career in the 1980s, she found the industry unwelcoming to women. Ornelas attempted to get a formal construction education, but she recalls being the only woman in class when a professor asked what she was doing there and ridiculed her for wanting to know how to read construction plans, she passed the contractors license exam and earned her general contractors license.
