Energy You Can’t Manufacture: IACMI Workforce & Training Teams Power First Build Freedom Summit

IACMI co-hosted the inaugural national Build Freedom Summit with Texas A&M Engineering Experiment Station Workforce Development division (TEES) held October 20-22 at the Galveston Island Convention Center. Nearly 600 attendees from manufacturing, defense, education, government and workforce development took part in two days of panels, presentations and breakout sessions. A career expo followed, connecting more than 1,000 students with hands-on opportunities to explore IACMI’s training programs: ACE, METAL and ACE METAL Foundations.

“Our team did what they do best: bring the strength of our training programs to life,” Workforce Communications and Public Affairs Manager Christina Honkonen said. “Through conversations, hands-on instruction and live demonstrations, we were able to show people not just what our programs offer, but the value they bring. Those demonstrations are especially important because they create opportunities for people to experience the training firsthand, engage with our work and see its impact in a whole new way.”

Three student summit attendees use virtual reality goggles.

Two people have a conversation in the Mississippi State TEES mobile trailer.

Part of a national movement

The summit is one piece of Build Freedom, a national campaign to close the skilled trades gap in America. A partnership between the Department of War (DoW), the mikeroweWORKS Foundation and the National Labor Exchange, Build Freedom launched in July 2026 with a mission to “build the workforce that builds and defends America.” It is facilitated by DoW’s Industrial Base Analysis and Sustainment (IBAS) program, which also supports IACMI’s ACE, METAL and ACE METAL Foundations programs.

“The Build Freedom Summit demonstrated the power of bringing industry, government and workforce leaders together around a shared mission to strengthen U.S. manufacturing,” said Andrew Pokelwaldt, vice president of Workforce. “IACMI was proud to bring a national perspective to the summit. The relationships built here, the knowledge shared and the actions that follow will help build the skilled workforce and industrial capacity needed for a stronger, more resilient defense industrial base.”

For Sierra Noe, Build Freedom project manager, the summit made those connections clearer.

“It was a great event for connecting and meeting people,” Noe said. “I appreciated hearing directly from Kristopher Rick, IBAS workforce sector lead, about the different phases of Build Freedom at the government’s level, and seeing IACMI’s alignment within IBAS. The event gave me a better understanding of the role IACMI plays in the defense industrial base and Build Freedom’s larger picture.”

Expertise on display

IACMI leaders and employees took center stage in five sessions, highlighting the expertise, collaboration and passion behind the organization’s growing workforce development efforts.

Keynote address – Chad Duty, IACMI chief executive officer
BuildFreedom.US Panel – Sean Roberts, Build Freedom program director
K-12 Manufacturing Pathways Lightning Talks – Greg Hayworth, K-12 workforce coordinator
Telling the Story of Domestic Production in the U.S. – Christina Honkonen
IACMI workforce panel – Andrew Pokelwaldt– vice president of Workforce; Elliot Keas– ACE program director; Mike Kubacki– METAL program director; Greg Harrell– K-12 workforce manager; panel moderated by Duty.

About 75 people attended the workforce panel session, where each training program lead spoke for about five minutes. They were joined by Taylor Stigall and Vanessa Morales, Mississippi State METAL K-12 program managers, and ACE program graduate Dominic Ponce, now a machinist at John Crane in Houston. Ponce said ACE helped him understand the whole production process, and that he found exceptional value in its computer-aided manufacturing training.

Learning by doing

On the expo floor, IACMI’s 20-by-20-foot booth served as an interactive hub transforming visitors’ interest into engagement. Both students and adults interacted with the ACE Air Engine Demonstration and toured a foundry in virtual reality through METAL’s VR Foundry Experience. ACE METAL Foundations ran the It’s Rocket Science STEM competition, and visitors could enter the Mississippi State trailer to manufacture their own cowbell.

“We find again and again at events that the thing that sets IACMI apart is the interaction,” Honkonen said. “That’s true for children and adults – the adults want to interact, too. When people come, they stay with us at our booth, they just love it.”

Those interactions made an impression on Mike Kubacki, METAL program director, who said talking with high school students was the highlight of his week.

“There was one student who ended our conversation with, ‘Wow, you really changed my perspective on this.’ I truly believe that was the goal: to show up and talk to these students about manufacturing, about skilled trades and how important it is to make things in the U.S.”