Emma Chambers keeps coming back to one phrase: I want to know everything.
At 20, she already holds two I-CAR Platinum recognitions, in both structural and non-structural repair, and is certified in aluminum, steel and silicon bronze welding. She can replace a quarter panel, a roof or a bedside, weld in a new radiator support and put a vehicle up on the frame rack for structural pulls. None of it happened by accident, and none of it happened alone.
Emma is the body tech at Andy’s Auto Body, where she started as a high school apprentice and never left. Ask her what made the difference, and the answer isn’t a class or a piece of paper. It’s Andy Powell, the shop’s owner and a body tech since 1992, who took on a teenager still juggling volleyball and homework and built her into a technician who, by her own admission and his wife’s, is still her own harshest critic.
“I truly love my job,” Emma said. “I love everybody I work with and everybody I work for. I think that makes a huge difference.”
Sink or Swim
Emma didn’t grow up dreaming about collision repair. She was a good student and a volleyball player at a small high school outside Vandalia, and for most of her life the plan was college. Then, in her sophomore year, she wanted something different; she just didn’t know what yet.
Her older brother had found welding through their vocational school and gone on to trade school, and watching him drew her toward auto body over mechanics or welding alone. Her first attempt at shop experience didn’t stick: an owner nearing retirement wasn’t interested in training a teenager. Then, during her junior year at Okaw Area Vocational School, her instructor walked out of class and asked if anyone wanted an apprenticeship.
“Normally I would have waited for the person sitting next to me to speak up first,” Emma said. “But something about it made me think, ‘No, I want this job.’ Before he could even say anything, I said, ‘I do.’”
That apprenticeship was with Andy Powell. A connection already existed (her uncle, a firefighter, knew Andy through the fire service), but Emma wanted to find her own way in first. “I’m very independent,” she said. “I don’t like having things handed to me.”
Andy started her on I-CAR coursework almost immediately and, per his wife, Michele Powell, rotated her through every department so she could find what drew her. There was no lightning-bolt moment: Emma learned alongside the shop’s other body tech, and when he left for another profession, she was suddenly doing body repair alone.
“That was her sink-or-swim moment,” Michele said. “She has learned so much from Andy, which has been doing it since 1992, that she just flourished. He didn’t tell her how to do it. He made her do it.”
By the end of her junior year, Emma had finished the online coursework for her first I-CAR certification; an instructor then tested her at the shop for about eight hours, and she earned her Platinum recognition while still in high school, something Michele says almost never happens. Emma started full time after graduating in 2024 and has been Andy’s body tech ever since.
“I wanted to work my hardest, do my best and grow as much as possible before I go off to college, if I go off to college,” she said. “He gave me so many good opportunities that I wanted to give 110 percent and show him I was worth keeping.”
What Andy and Michele Got Right
Ask Emma what made the apprenticeship work, and she doesn’t start with technique. She starts with the fact that Andy and Michele let her stay a teenager.
“When I started, one of the best things was that Andy and Michele understood I was still a kid,” she said. “I was playing volleyball. I had homework. If I needed to take a day off, they still wanted me to be a kid.” When it came time to decide between college and the shop, Andy didn’t push. “He wasn’t trying to keep me at the shop,” she said. “He wanted what was best for me.”
The mentorship has stayed hands-on: Andy appears in nearly every repair video Emma posts, ready to help, and the job has taught her, independent as she is, to ask for help more. “He’s taught me most everything I’ve learned in the shop,” she said. “I’ve always told myself there’s nothing I don’t want to know.”
Michele sees the same dynamic from the other side: Emma still second-guesses herself and comes looking for Andy’s approval sometimes, but that’s a matter of time, since “she is her own biggest critic.” Both point to a recent welding test as proof of what the teaching has produced: on an I-CAR steel sectioning exam, Emma finished just one point off Andy’s score, a body tech who’s been at this since 1992.
“I can see the smile on Andy’s face,” Emma said. “He’s seeing all of the time and effort he’s put into me and seeing me actually do well, and sometimes even outdo him on something. Making Andy and Michele proud means a lot to me.”
Beyond the Shop
Emma’s grandfather (she calls him her papa) was a little nervous when she chose the trade, though he knew telling her she couldn’t would guarantee she’d try. He was diagnosed with cancer during her junior year and died soon after; losing him became one of the biggest reasons she stuck with the work rather than a reason to leave it.
“He loved cars, and he loved telling stories about cars,” she said. “Working with cars was something that helped me get through losing him.” Her parents were supportive from the start, though cautious, and Emma says what changed their minds was watching how happy the work made her.
Collision repair remains a male-dominated trade, and Emma doesn’t pretend otherwise, but she treats it matter-of-factly rather than as the defining struggle of her career. “The simplest way I can put it is: If they don’t treat you the way they should, that’s not the place for you,” she said. At Andy’s, that hasn’t been an issue. “The guys are like my brothers.” Asked whether she’s felt underestimated because of her age or gender, her answer is short: not really.
She’s also started posting time-lapse videos of her repairs online, in part to show people what the trade actually involves. “There’s so much more” than dents and paint, she said. “You weld. You take cars apart. You get into the mechanics of the vehicle.” The push came from Cassandra of CT Body Tech in Connecticut, who founded a women’s collision-repair community called Body Woman; Emma now helps moderate it. When Emma went through knee surgery this year and was out of work for roughly six weeks, Cassandra posted asking the community to send her encouragement. “She’s truly one of the sweetest people I’ve gotten to know,” Emma said.
What She’d Tell the Next Emma
With collision repair facing a well-documented technician shortage, Emma’s take on how to attract the next generation is simple: let people try it before they rule it out. “A lot of schools don’t offer the opportunities I had through vocational school,” she said. “I got a snippet of what it was like to work in a shop before I had to decide whether I wanted to make it my career.”
Michele put the recruiting challenge more bluntly: this generation needs a clear path and the chance to discover it. “I can guarantee that I will need a plumber, electrician, a body shop, etc.,” she said, “but I will never need someone who majored in American Literature or basket weaving.”
Five years out, Emma isn’t chasing a title. She hasn’t learned to paint yet and wants to, and she wants to start showing up in person, not just online, for trade schools and kids weighing the same choice she once was.
‘Hopefully, five years from now I’ll know more,” she said. “That’s the biggest thing: I want to know more. I want to know everything, and there’s so much to learn.”
Fast Facts: Emma Chambers
- Age: 20 (turns 21 in October)
- Shop: Andy’s Auto Body Collision Repair Inc., Vandalia, Illinois
- Started: Summer between junior and senior year of high school; full-time upon graduating in 2024
- Training: Okaw Area Vocational School
- Certifications: Two I-CAR Platinum recognitions (structural and non-structural); certified in aluminum, steel and silicon bronze welding
- Online: Posts repair time-lapses on Instagram (@andysautobodycollision) and Andy’s Auto Body’s Facebook page; moderator of the Body Woman community founded by Cassandra of CT Body Tech
Leona Scott