Jim Gaillard took the long, hard road to become a master electrician.

Now he works to make sure others have an easier path.

After more than 20 years as a master electrician,

Gaillard’s mission is to ensure Milwaukee has safe electrical wiring and well-trained, high-quality electricians in the heart of the community.

A part of the community

Sitting in ThriveOn King, which he says is his favorite place in the city right now, Gaillard, 70, reminisced about being a first-generation Milwaukeean raised in the same neighborhood where ThriveOn now sits.

“I was the first person in my family born in Milwaukee,” he said. “The rest migrated up from Mississippi for a better education. I grew up right across the street from this place and went to school at Garfield Avenue.”

When Gaillard was coming up in the 1960s, the neighborhood was the epicenter of Milwaukee’s Black business district. Growing up there impacted the work he does today.

“Jim is passionate, determined and committed to the trade and reaching back to help others because of barriers he had to overcome,” said Kathy Gaillard, his sister and PR person. “He feels that if he could do it, others can too.”

Gaillard’s approach is multifaceted and community centered.

As an electrician, Gaillard noticed an issue with faulty wiring leading to fires. At the same time, he noticed Milwaukee lacks well-trained Black electricians.

So he started training people in primarily Black communities to become electricians. He emphasized training those in the process of reentry.

“It’s a win-win for everyone,” he said. “If I can give you a skill that will allow you to make a living wage, you’ll be less likely to go back to jail and you’re making decent money. And the people in your community have a qualified electrician to call rather than someone that’ll do a patch job.”

He is also working in partnership with the Milwaukee Fire Department that pays him to train people to work on homes that already have electrical issues for free.

The professor

Growing up, Gaillard was a math whiz.

“I loved that there was only ever one answer with math,” he said. “In other subjects, you could misinterpret or get the answer wrong if you understood something differently than your teacher did. But in math you were either right or wrong.”

Pairing his love for math with what he said was his logical brain, friends started to refer to him as “the professor.” And he says from there he was pushed to succeed by everyone in his circle.

“I feel like people were planning my life behind my back,” he said. “I would decide I was going to do something and life decided something else.”

One example of that was his becoming a part of the ABC, or A Better Chance program, which puts high-performing students of color into the nation’s leadership pipeline by placing them in the nation’s top independent and public schools.

He said at the time he was recruited for the program, he was enjoying hanging out with friends and getting in a bit of trouble, but the program moved him away from that and set him on another path.

“I moved up to Oshkosh with students from across the world,” he said. “We were staying with a German host family and the experience changed my perspective on life.”

Confronting barriers along the way

Gaillard attended Marquette University as a student of the Educational Opportunity Program. He said he made a few mistakes and fell off track more than once.

He worked for the city’s Bureau of Engineering, which he was told was the city’s most racist department.  

Gaillard said he fought racism daily and even was forced to leave the department until he worked his way back.

“By the time they had bothered and bothered me, I’d learned too much,” he said. “So not only was I someone they didn’t want around, I was good at my job.”

Loving his reality

“I used to do things or use substances as a way to escape my reality,” he said. “Now I love my reality, I don’t want to escape it.”

Gaillard said in November 2000, he started walking the straight path.

In 2002 he started his electrical company, and in 2012 he met his business partner Don Utech and had the opportunity to work on Ezekiel CDC with him.

“We’re an odd couple because I am a long-range planner and Jim is a responder, his phone is his plan,” Utech said. “But it works because we are both passionate about trying to give back to this city.”

Since then, Gaillard has been working in the community, training people to become electricians.

“I had to fight and knock down doors on my way up,” he said. “I’m the vehicle to get people indoors now.”