Maya Aharon says AI will expand skilled trades jobs

FellowHero co-founder and CEO Maya Aharon argues AI will help, not hurt, the skilled trades by letting service businesses handle more work than their headcount allows. Her view comes as the industry faces labor shortages and growing demand for building maintenance and services.

Why it matters: - Maya Aharon says AI can relieve one of the skilled trades’ biggest constraints: not enough workers to meet demand. - The approach could let trades businesses take on more work, improve profitability, and make the industry easier to enter. - Aharon argues the built environment still needs people in the field, even if AI handles more office and screen-based work.

What happened: - Maya Aharon, co-founder and CEO of FellowHero, said AI should be viewed as a hire, not just software. - Aharon made the case in a profile featured by Influential Women. - FellowHero is building an AI workforce for trades businesses. - The company is based in the San Francisco, California area.

The details: - Aharon said AI breaks the old limit where a business could only grow as fast as it could hire. - She said the skilled trades face two pressures: a shrinking field workforce and a service model that limits how much existing workers can do. - Aharon said buildings, hospitals, schools, homes, and workplaces all depend on systems that require ongoing maintenance. - She said AI will take on more work done entirely on a screen, while physical jobs still require someone to show up and complete the work. - FellowHero first connects scattered records into account and equipment history. - SAM, FellowHero’s AI workforce, takes on full roles and produces service reports, renewal packages, replacement proposals, and sales campaigns. - FellowHero says the system gives businesses capacity and capabilities they cannot hire for directly. - Aharon said the result is greater profitability for trades businesses. - Aharon has worked in AI since 2014. - She co-founded Servicefriend, an AI company later acquired early in its life by Facebook. - She also held roles at Turntide Technologies as general manager and vice president of product, and at Redaptive as chief product and marketing officer. - Aharon founded Proper Formation, a consulting firm focused on go-to-market, product-market fit, value proposition definition, and branding. - Her background includes six years in the Israeli Defense Forces in special forces and cyber-intelligence units. - She holds a Bachelor of Arts in Business Administration and Management, with a focus on Marketing, from Reichman University. - Aharon is fluent in English and Hebrew. - Her profile includes links to her Influential Women page and FellowHero.

Between the lines: - Aharon is framing AI as labor augmentation in an industry that cannot easily scale with hiring alone. - Her argument fits a broader debate over whether AI replaces workers or expands the amount of work a business can safely and profitably take on. - She is also positioning AI adoption as a path for newer workers to ramp up faster and perform more consistently. - The emphasis on field work suggests the biggest AI gains in trades may come from reducing back-office friction, not eliminating on-site labor.

What's next: - FellowHero appears positioned to keep pushing AI deeper into trade operations, especially where businesses need more output without adding headcount. - Aharon said leaders have to be deliberate about the future AI builds, suggesting the company will continue focusing on tools for industries that keep the world running. - The broader test will be whether AI systems can reliably create more capacity in skilled trades without reducing the need for human technicians in the field.

The bottom line: - Aharon’s bet is clear: AI will not shrink the skilled trades. It will help them grow faster than hiring alone allows.