In this article:

• How Pedoc Power Solutions came to be led by two sisters in a male-dominated industry
• The father whose belief in people built the foundation they inherited
• A Chicago electrical contractor who carved her own path in the same world
• What these stories share, and why they matter

Manufacturing is not an industry that gets celebrated much during Women’s History Month. The names that surface tend to come from politics, medicine, law, or the arts. But on the floor of a metal fabrication facility in Mount Prospect, Illinois, and across 32 years of job sites throughout the Chicago area, two stories have been quietly unfolding that belong in that conversation.

One is the story of Marlene Palmer and Melinda Marks, sisters behind Pedoc Power Solutions and its parent company Marcres Metalwerks, a USA-based manufacturer of stainless steel outdoor power pedestals. The other is the story of Michele Mance, owner of Total Electric, Inc., a union electrical contractor whose clients include the University of Chicago, Nestle, Kellogg’s, and Chase Bank. Neither story was handed to them. Both were built.

A Foundation Their Father Laid

Marcres Metalwerks was founded in 1978 by Ulrich (“Ollie”) Marks. He started a custom metal fabrication shop at a time when the industry ran almost entirely on relationships, handwork, and hard-won technical knowledge. From the beginning, the way Ollie ran his company was inseparable from how he treated his people.

Melinda has described her father’s daily routine with the kind of specificity that comes from a memory that clearly still means something. Every morning at 9 a.m., he walked the shop floor. He stopped at each person’s station. He helped troubleshoot problems, offered encouragement, asked about families, and engaged with his employees as whole people rather than production units.

“We have a couple of folks that have been there since the early years.” Melinda has said. “My father invested in their development with encouragement, patience, hands-on mentoring, and in general, treated employees like family. He was generous, fair and truly cared about everyone. To this day, they speak so highly of my dad and how he helped them and their families.”

Some of those employees came in with metalworking skills. Others came in with no experience at all. Ollie trained them. He kept them. Some have been at the company for nearly five decades. The fact that Marcres still has people on the floor who started under its founder is a statement about what kind of company it is, and what kind of man built it.

One of Ollie’s last major projects was a partnership with an electrician who had identified the need for safer outdoor electrical pedestals. That collaboration led to Marcres acquiring the Pedoc product line in 2009, turning a contract manufacturing relationship into a proprietary product business. It was a vision Ollie seeded. His daughters are the ones who grew it.

The Sisters Who Took It Forward

Marlene Palmer serves as owner and president of Marcres Metalwerks and Pedoc Power Solutions, bringing decades of manufacturing experience to both the operational and strategic leadership of the company. Melinda Marks runs project management and marketing, and is the face of Pedoc in much of its external communications and content.

“Taking over the leadership role meant we had big shoes to fill, but we were determined to honor his legacy by protecting client relationships and business practices he spent a lifetime building,” Marlene notes. “Over the years, we have not only maintained those core accounts but have expanded and transformed our operations. Given our father’s deep passion for technology, we know he would be incredibly proud to see his life’s work modernized with advanced, automated equipment and successfully steered into a new era of growth.”

What is visible from the outside is a company that has continued to grow in exactly the direction  Ollie  Marks pointed it. The investment in people is still there — Melinda talks about bringing in younger employees and watching them develop, the same way her father’s team has described watching themselves develop under him. The commitment to domestic manufacturing is still there, with the company continuing to invest in technology, including a recently installed robotic laserwelder, alongside the skilled handwork that has always defined the product. And the belief that a product built right the first time is worth more than a cheaper one built fast — that is still the operating principle.

Pedoc makes stainless steel outdoor power pedestals. Every pedestal is UL listed under standard 1773, NEMA 3R rated for wet outdoor locations, and manufactured in the United States. The product is not cheaply built. It was never meant to be. It was meant to last.

A Parallel Path in the Trades

Michele Mance did not inherit a company. She built one from scratch, starting with a decision to enter a field that the men closest to her told her was not for her.

Her brother and uncle were both electricians. When she expressed interest in the trades, their response was direct: there is no way you can do it. She did it anyway, starting her apprenticeship at 27, later than most, in a union program where she was one of only a handful of women. Of the women who started alongside her, she is the only one still in the field. “It’s hard work,” she says simply. “They’ll test you.”

The testing she refers to is not hypothetical. On job sites, she encountered the skepticism that women in skilled trades have always encountered: the assumption of incompetence, the need to prove yourself before you are taken seriously. Once she did prove herself, the dynamic shifted. She recalls that the same men who doubted her at the start would eventually offer to carry her tool bag.

“Until you prove yourself, they treat you like dirt. But then once you prove yourself, they even offer to carry my tool bag. And I’m like, I carried a diaper bag with two car seats — I’m fine carrying my tool bag.”

She finished her apprenticeship and, with her former superintendent, founded Total Electric, Inc. She still runs it today, alongside her brother. The company has been in business for over 25 years, a milestone that puts it in a small category: the vast majority of businesses do not survive their first five years. Total Electric has cycled through that window five times.

Her success is grounded in a few principles she states plainly. She found her niche and stayed in it. Her firm does industrial and commercial work. She does not take residential jobs because that is not what her team is built for. She is selective about the general contractors she bids with, choosing relationships she trusts over volume. And she has always let the quality of the work do the talking.

What These Stories Have in Common

Mance and the Marks sisters did not know each other before Pedoc began exploring conversations with electrical contractors earlier this year. Their paths have run in different directions through the same industry. But they share something worth naming.

Both built their credibility in spaces that were not designed with them in mind. And both relied on quality and consistency rather than on scale or self-promotion. Both speak about their work with the matter-of-fact directness of people who have been doing something difficult for a long time and have stopped feeling the need to explain it.

While it’s Mance who explains: “Word of mouth on the street — if you do well, they’ll come to you.” This sentiment rings true for Pedoc as well. Both have had customers find them through word of mouth and repeat, happy customers. 

And both carry a relationship to the people around them that runs deeper than transactions. Ollie Marks walked his shop floor every morning not because he had to, but because he understood that a company is the people in it. Mance talks about the young women who started their electrical apprenticeships alongside her and did not stay, and there is something in the way she talks about them that suggests she thinks about it. When asked what she would tell young women considering a trade, she does not hesitate: “Take whatever opportunity you’ve got and take it. If somebody says you can’t, just keep going.”

Melinda has said something similar about what her father left behind. It was not just a company with equipment and customers and a product line. It was a way of operating — patient, fair, invested in people for the long term — that she and her sister are still practicing.

Women’s History Month

Women’s History Month tends to celebrate the firsts: first to hold an office, first to enter a room, first to be recognized in a field. Those firsts matter. So do the women who are on their twenty-fifth year of running something quietly and extremely well in industries where no one put out a welcome mat. Both kinds of stories deserve to be told.

Pedoc Power Solutions is a family-owned, USA-based manufacturer of stainless steel outdoor power pedestals, headquartered in Mount Prospect, Illinois. Marlene Palmer serves as owner and president of Marcres Metalwerks and Pedoc Power Solutions. Melinda Marks serves as Director of Project Management and leads Pedoc’s marketing and customer outreach. Their father, Ulrich Marks, founded Marcres Metalwerks in 1978.

Michele Mance is the owner of Total Electric, Inc., a union electrical contractor based in the Chicago area, serving commercial and industrial clients for over 25 years.