Natasha Ozybko did not arrive in the asphalt industry with an engineering degree or a family business behind her name. She arrived with an open mind and a strong personal drive, and was swiftly met with an incredibly difficult task. It was her job to head out on the road and try to sell a product that, at the time, had never been seen before.
"It was something completely new," Ozybko said. "It had been sitting on the shelf at our company for forty years, and they were like, here, go sell this."
So, that’s just what she did. Working out of Pittsburgh, she opened the northeast market for high-tensile-strength synthetic fiber reinforcement for asphalt pavement, a product that up until that point had gone largely untouched in the industry. To her benefit, this meant that while she wasn’t introducing a new competitor into the market, facing entrenched customer loyalties. Unfortunately, the job was to educate and spread awareness about an entirely new category. But she was determined to get it out there.
That willingness to walk into a room, read it fast, and make something out of nothing became a recurring theme throughout her career, and eventually, the foundation for something bigger than a sales territory. The relationships she forged with like-minded people in asphalt would eventually influence the present industry we know today.
From Five People To A Movement
In June of 2017, Ozybko was attending a conference in Atlanta when a handful of industry colleagues pulled her aside with an idea. They wanted to build something for women in asphalt. She did not need a detailed pitch.
"I didn't even care what it was," she said. "I was like, yes, I'm on board."
That conversation was the beginning of what became Women of Asphalt (WoA), which Ozybko co-founded alongside Audrey Copeland (President & CEO, National Asphalt Pavement Association), Amy Miller (President, Asphalt Contractor Association of Florida), Ashley Batson (Global Business Director, Ingevity) and Tracie Schlich (Director of Marketing, Asphalt Institute). The group launched in earnest at World of Asphalt, where they hosted an open bar on the trade floor on the first day of the show, handed out branded T-shirts, and by the end of the three-day event, had fielded two questions more than any other: Is there a Women of Asphalt chapter in my state? And where can I send a check?
"We captured lightning in a bottle," Ozybko said.
The organization grew into a formal 501(c)(6), complete with a board of directors and a national presence. One of its early initiatives was to document 100 women working in asphalt, featuring a photograph and short bio for each. The campaign ran for 100 consecutive days.
"I didn't [even] know if there were 100 women in the industry," Ozybko said. "We started panicking."
They found them. The campaign appeared on the cover of an industry trade publication and became one of the more visible moments of the organization's early years. Ozybko served as the organization's second president before stepping away in September of 2021.
MOXY: The Voice of Women in Infrastructure
Her departure from Women of Asphalt was a new chapter, and the beginning of something broader.
Teaming up with Monica Dutcher, then-editor of Asphalt Pavement magazine, Ozybko co-founded MOXY, a digital platform carrying the tagline, "The voice of women in infrastructure." The idea was built around a simple observation: women working across nearly two dozen industries that fall under the infrastructure umbrella were having the same conversations, fighting the same battles, and rarely hearing themselves reflected in the media covering their fields.
During its initial run, MOXY published more than two hundred stories from women across construction, engineering, transportation, and other related industries. Some wrote their own pieces while others were interviewed and had their stories told on their behalf. The platform hosted sections dedicated to entrepreneurship, motherhood, and the intersections between professional and personal identity in male-dominated fields like the asphalt industry but not limited to just that field.
During this time, however, finding an audience hungry for that type of content was never the problem.
"People wanted to help, but nobody had any money [to help]," Ozybko said.
Despite the financial headwinds, Ozybko kept the platform running after Dutcher stepped away. Then, in December of 2024, she pivoted and launched “Conversations with MOXY,” which was a LinkedIn Live interview series in which she sat down with women working throughout infrastructure and drew out their stories in long-form conversations. She originally committed to just ten episodes to start, five days a week over two weeks. However, when those wrapped, she kept going.
At the time of our interview, there were fifty-one episodes recorded, each running close to an hour. The conversations featured women across a wide demographic range, including young professionals, veterans of the trades, and executives. Ozybko told us the episodes were being compiled, to then be published on a dedicated YouTube channel, with a relaunched website tying the full MOXY archive together.
"Perfection cannot hinder progress," she said.
The platform is still searching for a sustainable way forward, a challenge Ozybko discussed with a characteristic directness. But the content archive she built represents something rare in the industry media landscape: a consistent, practitioner-driven record of what women in infrastructure actually experience, in their own words. That is something we’ve tried to create with this column, as well, despite it being on a much smaller scale that she achieved.
Ozybko now lives in Charlotte and remains active in advocacy and consulting work. She is open to speaking opportunities and collaboration with trade publications and industry events that share MOXY’s mission.
