Baltimore Social Innovation Journal, Fall 2016 Fall 2016 | Page 8

Building
a Future
A Renaissance woman wants to put power – literally – into the hands of black women.
By Lisa Simeone

Even in a field of high achievers, Shelley
Halstead stands out. After all, how many
people do you know who’ve fought forest
fires, traveled to New Zealand, Brazil, and
Antarctica, lived in a commune in Belgium
and an ashram in India, mastered carpentry,
plumbing, and electrical work, and then
gone to law school?
“Yeah, I know I’m atypical,” says Halstead,
with admirable understatement. “But when
I say I’m going to do something, I do it. It
holds me accountable.”
Halstead grew up in Iowa, attended the
University of Oregon for two years, and then
set off in her twenties for a life of adventure.
She returned to the U.S. a few years later
to get her undergraduate degree at the
University of Washington, and many years
after that her law degree at the same school.
Every step of the way, her attitude was, “I
want to learn how to do X. So what steps do
I take to get there?”
She wanted to start her own commune,
but she didn’t know how to build anything.
So she joined Local 131 of the Carpenters

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Union in Seattle. There, she endured thirteen
years of sexual and racial harassment, but
she also learned everything she needed to
know about building houses from scratch.
Yet she still had an itch.
“What do I want to do?” she asked
herself. “What is my passion? How do I
effect change?”
Get a Master’s in Public Administration?
No, too boring. Become a politician? No,
never. So she decided to go to law school.
Since then, Halstead has worked at the
National Center for Lesbian Rights, the
Pacific Northwest Abortion Fund, and
now volunteers two days a week with the
Maryland Volunteer Lawyers Service. This
is all while continuing to make a living as a
professional carpenter.
Halstead wants other women to feel
the personal power and sense of mastery
she does. That’s why she founded Black
Women Build. She will take on two to three
women at a time and train them in all the
skills needed to maintain a house, while