Alisyn Palla grew up on a Bakersfield, Calif. dairy farm, the daughter of a man who could build anything – dairies and cars among them. Making things ran in the family long before she got involved in the welding industry. Her path took her through college and law school and into a career as a litigation attorney, a profession she practiced in Bakersfield for 16 years before moving in-house as general counsel for a client in 2019.
Around 14 years ago, a neighbor moving abroad gave her something that would reconnect her with what she experienced on the farm in her youth.
“He brought over a Harbor Freight welder and I asked, ‘What is that?’” Palla recalls. “He said, ‘It’s a welder. Learn how to use it.’”
She wasn’t exactly awed by the experience of using a welding machine – not at first.
“I didn’t actually fall in love with welding until I started using it creatively,” she says.
Once she became intrigued, however, Palla approached welding with the same rigor that helped her through college; she learned the basics and became a student of the craft.
A public outing
The gift from her neighbor wasn’t tossed into a corner of the garage and forgotten, because after years buried in litigation, Palla simply “needed an outlet.”
She has always loved working with her hands, but when she was young, vocational education carried a stigma – trade school was treated as the destination for students who weren’t considered college material. College set her up for a career in law, but today, she says, her heart is firmly planted in the arts and the trades.
Art has been Palla’s outlet since childhood, but she was always guarded about sharing it. Pairing her welding skills with plasma cutting opened a new medium of expression and somehow made sharing a piece of her soul easier to manage.
“Feb. 1, 2013, was the first time I put my art out there publicly for everyone to see,” she says. Every piece she displayed that night sold.
Gradually, the time Palla invested in her art began to tip the scales professionally. She dialed back her work as an attorney and began making a name for herself as a skilled welder and artist.
Leaning into education
In February 2023, Palla attended a weeklong welding workshop that covered MIG, TIG and stick, as well as metal sculpting, and came home with “pure fire in my soul.” That same year, she attended her first Fabtech; joined the American Welding Society (AWS); completed “Frugatti’s Vine,” a 60-ft. sculpture of six hand-sculpted steel grapevines for Frugatti’s Italian Eatery; and started work on three other large public art installations.
By early 2024, she began accepting invitations to speak at welding programs, conventions and trade shows, demonstrating her metal art techniques and working with industry partners, including, Miller, Knipex and the AWS.
The connections Palla has made have turned into lasting friendships. She went from knowing almost nobody to chairing her local AWS section, serving as technical chair for the Welding Pod for SkillsUSA-California and speaking around the country about her unconventional path into the industry.
During the World Ag Expo in 2024 where Palla appeared as a guest metal artist, she encountered a couple and their 9-year-old daughter. The girl looked bored, so Palla knelt down and asked, “Would you like to learn how to weld?” The answer was an emphatic “yes” and that experience, which ended with the girl walking away with Christmas ornaments she created from mild steel for her entire family (including the dog and cat), flipped a switch in Palla, who had never envisioned herself as an educator.
“Those are core memories for both of us,” she says, adding that the girl has stayed in touch and continues to share her progress in metal art.
As trade shows and distributor events increasingly put Palla in front of students, she found that teaching was becoming as important as making art.
“In the last year or two,” she says, “I’ve grown to love teaching and inspiring others as much, and maybe even a little more, than creating my own art.”
Meraki is a mainstay
In February 2026, Palla opened Meraki Creative Works (MCW) – a growing makerspace in Bakersfield where she teaches others how to weld by making their own works of art. MCW also offers workshops in pottery and ceramics, with plans to soon include blacksmithing and mixed-media options. Meraki, Palla notes, is a Greek word for doing something with heart, passion and soul, and leaving a piece of yourself behind in what you do. Another venture is Meraki Metal Works, which focuses on Palla’s creative works.
“Creating is a trust fall,” she says, “a space for vulnerability. When I create with passion and purpose – ‘meraki’ – I feel limitless.”
More than 300 people attended the opening, including local residents and industry partners from around the country. Palla wasn’t expecting that kind of turnout and says MCW, which she thought would take three to five years to become established, is already humming with activity, including educational courses.
Palla’s workshops cover safety and fundamental MIG and TIG techniques without making students wait hours to build something. With the intermediate-level classes, students also build core welding skills, like good fit-up, distortion control and finishing techniques. Along the way, they may also learn to use a chop saw, plasma cutter, belt sander and grinder.
“My workshops are built so students of any skill level leave with a finished piece, new skills and the confidence to keep creating,” she says. “I teach progress over perfection.”
Students have options, too, including private one-on-one workshops or private group workshops of up to 15 guests per session. Palla plans to introduce more intermediate-level workshops and has expanded the creative format into longer sessions.
Impact on a generation
Some of Palla’s students at MCW are curious about welding as a hobby, but others are exploring whether or not it could be a career. Recently, she taught a private workshop for a group of 14-year-old boys, one of whom went on to enroll in the local junior college welding program over the summer. What was once a curiosity has now become a career interest for him.
To get more time under the hood, Palla says he plans to become an MCW member, allowing him to rent a workstation while pursuing workforce readiness welding training in a more advanced trade program.
“He’s a perfect example of a young man who didn’t have a path and has found an opportunity with welding that he might not otherwise have had,” she says.
Palla sees outcomes like that as part of her responsibility to the industry. She’s a Gen Xer, a generation that was strongly advised to go to college, she says, and she wants young people to understand that the trades are a viable option.
“If you’re willing to work hard and find a lane, something you’re passionate about,” she says, “you can do anything in this industry.”
The sudden and unexpected growth of MCW and Palla’s own career as a speaker, artist and now educator have her contending with “imposter syndrome” from time to time, but as she has grown as an instructor and industry advocate, the focus moves away from herself and more toward her purpose.
“It’s become very clear to me – it isn’t about me and my journey,” she says, “but about inspiring and empowering others. It’s a much bigger picture.”
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