This article is one in a series of articles about what life looks like in Butler County ahead of the nation’s 250th anniversary on July 4, 2026. Stories in this series aim to showcase what it’s like to live, work, play and serve in Butler County during this moment in history.

At first glance, the jackets Team USA athletes wore during the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea, looked like ordinary outerwear. They were not.

As athletes stepped into the opening ceremony in bitter cold, their Ralph Lauren parkas included a flexible heating system developed through a collaboration involving DuPont and Butler Technologies, the Butler company co-founded by Nadine Tripodi in 1990.

The technology helped keep athletes warm on one of the world’s biggest stages and represented the culmination of decades spent transforming a traditional printing business into a manufacturer of advanced electronic products.

When she saw American athletes wearing those jackets on television — keeping them warm in 7-degree temperatures with technology her company had developed — Tripodi was overwhelmed.

“I don’t even know if I could explain it. I could hardly believe what I was seeing,” she said.

Born and raised in Pittsburgh’s South Hills, Tripodi moved to Butler in 1989 seeking a less congested commute to work and a slower pace of life. She and her business partner, the late Bill Darney, were deeply involved in the printing industry in Pittsburgh.

A year later, Tripodi and Darney left their jobs in Pittsburgh and founded Butler Technologies, hoping a smaller community would provide a more informal, supportive environment in which to build a business.

“We absolutely found that in Butler,” she said.

The company began with the printing work Tripodi and Darney already knew, but Tripodi soon saw that printing could do far more than place words or images on a surface.

She was fascinated by screen printing when she realized that with special materials, including conductive inks that carry electricity, the same process could be used to make working parts. A microwave keypad is one example. What looks like a simple panel of buttons is built from thin printed layers that help complete circuits and send signals when the buttons are pressed.

That idea helped lead Butler Technologies from industrial labels and markings into more advanced products, including printed electronics, sensors and flexible heating systems like the one used in the Olympic jackets.

Tripodi’s entrepreneurial spirit began much earlier in childhood.

One of eight children — six boys and two girls — she grew up in a household where girls and boys were expected to tackle the same kinds of projects, whether that meant changing brakes on a car or helping remodel the basement.

“I don’t think I ever had a clear idea that boys do this and girls do that,” she said.

Tripodi said she was drawn to manufacturing, even without a formal engineering background.

“I love to make things, and I like how things work,” she said. “When you see things that fascinate you and you know you can make them, it grows out of that.”

In the early days, Tripodi said, the partners needed “a great deal of help,” and Butler provided it. A real estate company offered them space in exchange for cleaning offices. Next Tier Bank, local development agencies, schools and established companies opened doors, offered guidance and helped connect the young business with workers and customers.

“From the very beginning, people helped us,” she said. “They supported us and helped us even when our asks were kind of nutty.”

“I can’t leave out the fact that Butler gave us a really good pool of hard-working employees,” she added. “I will never minimize the impact that had on our ability to sustain a business here in the city.”

She points to the educational network — including Butler School District, Butler County Community College, the Butler County Area Vocational-Technical School and companies such as Mine Safety Appliances, now MSA — as part of the reason Butler Technologies was able to grow.

After 30 years building Butler Technologies, Tripodi was ready to sell the business. Her son bought the company in 2020. She had retirement in mind, but her husband, Terry Kaiserman, was thinking about a new business endeavor.

“He suggested we try something different,” she said, “and he reminded me that we wanted to do something to help people.”

That new business was coffee.

For the first few years, Butler Coffee Lab on Main Street focused on manufacturing and selling coffee pods and bagged coffee. Over time, however, the couple began to see a larger purpose for the company. Tripodi has a daughter with special needs, and she knows firsthand the anxiety that sets in when a young adult with a disability finishes school and faces a workforce not always designed to include them.

That experience became the engine behind something new.

A year ago, that new focus of Butler Coffee Lab became Keystone Talent Bridge, a training program for persons with disabilities. Keystone Talent Bridge was founded by Luke Gilligan, 24, a Grove City College graduate who studied social enterprises and helped build the program.

Gilligan said he has had a special interest in persons with disabilities since his teen years, when he was a member of Best Buddies, a program that pairs students with other students who have intellectual and developmental disabilities to build friendships, inclusion and leadership.

He was a perfect fit to get the program off the ground at Butler Coffee Lab.

Today, a cohort of eight students is completing training they began in January. In addition to learning the coffee business, they also are gaining skills to shake hands, interview for jobs, build confidence, work as a team and develop the basic work-readiness skills they need not only to get jobs but to keep them.

Gilligan credited the foresight of Tripodi and Kaiserman with turning a personal cause into a program that helps persons with disabilities prepare for lasting employment.

“I think they’ve made a tremendous impact on the workforce development program for individuals with disabilities,” Gilligan said, describing how the couple turned personal experience into action.

“They took their own story and funded something that is not only an admirable cause but a personal one for them,” he said. “They want to see the system change, and they’re directly doing that right now.”

For Tripodi, the two businesses she founded are not as different as they might first appear. Whether making advanced technology, coffee or job-training opportunities, her work came back to the same principles: building something carefully, treating people well and becoming part of the community.

She is proud that her four grandchildren are being raised in a city she loves, and proud to have played a part in Butler’s history as the nation marks its 250th anniversary.

When asked how she hopes people remember her contributions, she said she wants them to remember that Butler Technologies and Butler Coffee Lab created opportunities for people.

“People need purpose and direction,” she said. “I hope that between Butler Technologies and Butler Coffee Lab we’ve had a positive impact on a lot of lives.”

She also recalls advice given to her by one of her earliest sales managers in Pittsburgh, advice that became central to both of her careers — first at Butler Technologies and later at Butler Coffee Lab.

“The day you stop selling and start helping people is the day that you will be successful in sales,” he said.