Our History

The Las Vegas Institute of Welding (LVIW) is a Woman Owned Small Business (WOSB); the
business owner and Chief Executive Officer is Ms. Gabrielle Roper. LVIW was licensed by the
State of Nevada Commission on Post-Secondary Education in 2019.

LVIW’s owner and CEO Gabrielle “Brie” Roper has been around the welding and fabrication industry all her life, holding ownership, management, and leadership positions in fabrication and metal finishing companies in Southern Nevada.

She saw that many of these companies were consistently having difficulty finding and
retaining qualified welders and fabricators at virtually all skill levels. She further realized the cause of the problem was a troubling gap in the industry; the training and certification pipeline was simply not keeping up with an ever-increasing demand for qualified welders in the region.

As this shortage of qualified welders continued to worsen, Brie, now raising three children,
realized that another unmet need in our community was also spinning out of control. Crime rates and recidivism were increasing, while too many people from difficult circumstances or
‘compromised’ backgrounds were unable to find good employment. A large number of people
found themselves in a cycle of crime, jail, and unemployment, because they were less than
desirable in the majority of workplace environments.

Brie realized that there was a niche where these forgotten people who were not easily
employable elsewhere could thrive, at the same time addressing the shortage of talent she had
identified in the welding industry.

The missing piece of the puzzle was creating a specialized training program that addressed three interdependent needs: quality hands-on training for welders, robust supportive components to improve job-readiness and employability, and dedicated staff focused solely on job placement and job retention in the welding and fabrication industry.

The idea for Las Vegas Institute of Welding was born out of one entrepreneur’s vision of
a “home run” scenario: Provide the hardest to employ in our society with the skills they need to
make a good living, place them into a lucrative industry that does not reject them on the basis of
aappearance/education/background, and make our community safer and better by turning taxpayer liabilities into taxpayers.