Derrick Aragon recalls looking at abandoned lots while he was growing up and thinking about the opportunity of the space. Once he realized he could bring development into communities, make a difference and help with Portland’s housing crisis, it transformed his vision and interest.

“I love the challenge, and that every day is different. There are a lot of moving parts and small pieces, and it is rewarding to see something come to life,” he said. “I get to work and interact with different people and individuals in our community every day. There are deadlines that need to be hit, but you also have a lot of things outside of your control, like weather, other schedules and budget.”

Aragon recently partnered with Do Good Multnomah to build affordable housing for 28 homeless veterans in Northeast Portland.

“Not only is my business in Northeast Portland, but my wife grew up in the area and we currently live there. It was really incredible to not only give back to our local community but stop by each day to watch it come to life.”

Aragon also builds modular structures and works with a company in Idaho to build the modules inside a covered building. A crane then fits them together and, by the third day, the building is complete.

“I think one of my other favorite projects that I am proud of is our family home. I designed the house, worked with an architect to help draw up the plans, picked out all the material, colors, appliances, etc.,” he said. “I got in and dug holes, worked on excavators, installed tile and built it from the ground up. A lot of hard work went into it, and it is really incredible to watch my daughter now roam the home that I built.”

In addition to Do Good Multnomah, Aragon is involved in Rebuilding Together with his wife, a longtime volunteer.

“It is a wonderful program to help homeowners in our local community. It is a great way to strengthen our community and help repair homes,” he said.

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Starting your own company takes guts, gumption and a healthy dose of risk to make it work.

But for someone who has always had to battle against the odds and fight her way forward in her career, it’s just about the only path that makes sense. From working in a hydroponic tomato nursery to temp work all the way up the ladder to CEO of her own firm, Laurie Allen has made it work, and in a big way.

“I have quite the story,” said Allen with a laugh. “I’m a homegrown country girl from Oregon with family roots that had an infatuation with a guy.”

If she hadn’t moved away to Arizona to pursue her love, however, she might never have followed the path that now has her running Allen Construction Management Services Northwest and overseeing projects worth hundreds of millions of dollars.

“We met and worked together over 20 years ago,” said Monique Allen, president of ACMS NW, but no relation to Laurie. “We kept in touch and came back together again. I’ve worked on and off with her for over 20 years now, and those relationships over the years, there are so many people in the industry that love Laurie and love working with her. She definitely has deep roots in the industry.”

Back in 1995, Laurie Allen came back to Oregon from Arizona and needed work. With degrees in civil engineering from Lewis and Clark College and Portland State University, she snagged a three-month temporary job as a consultant with the City of Portland. That led to full-time work and, eventually, a job with CMTS LLC, a Texas-based firm specializing in engineering, construction management and quality assurance. She spent 19 years with CMTS, moving up the ranks to become vice president of their Pacific Northwest Region office in Portland.

She has admiration for all her former employers. But it was still the City of Portland where she learned some of the fundamental skills that have served her well over the past two decades.

“That’s where I got to learn everything,” Laurie Allen said. “I knew the basics of office administration, being organized, learning about construction, learning about migratory species and chasing the job, learning about the City of Portland. The inspectors were wonderful and they would sit with me and explain their work. … It was all fascinating.”

Her time with CMTS, however, gave her the experience and skill to not only strike out on her own, but also succeed at running her own firm. She partnered with Monique Allen once again to make it happen.

“I have so much respect and appreciation for my former employer,” she said.

Business conditions, as well as the death of her father, however, combined to force her hand. A change was needed on multiple fronts. But she didn’t let the challenge deter her. “It was like starting over, it didn’t matter what I’d done previously, I had to start over to prove myself,” she said. “But I’m still pinching myself now. I can’t believe we are where we are in such a short amount of time.”

ACMS NW opened up shop on Aug. 26, 2013, and won its first contract in 2015 with the Portland Water Bureau. She now runs the company with her early experiences still in mind.

“I remember years ago an inspector looked at me one day and said ‘Laurie, why aren’t you doing this? Why don’t you have your own CM and inspection services firm?’” she said. “Years later we just had to get out of our own way and figure out how we can do that.”

When she did strike out on her own, she never forgot her roots as a humble employee.

“She’s definitely a champion for employee rights,” Monique Allen said. “She creates all kinds of opportunities for them. That’s where she really shines as far as the employees, and also the clients, are concerned. The employees are so happy it comes through in the quality of the services they get overall.”

As a woman in the man’s world of construction, Laurie Allen also realizes she has had to work twice as hard in some respects to make things work.
“Sometimes you never can move some people over, and that’s OK,” she said. “Sometimes there are people who don’t want to accept a girl can be successful or influential in the construction environment. But our company has been doing a really, really good job of including and representing diversity and promoting women in the workplace. That’s something we take a lot of pride in.”

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Sarah Betz grew up with a love of the outdoors and the environment. When the family cat caught and killed birds, her parents would freeze them so she, her brother and her father could dissect them. “And I always enjoyed biology in school, so going into the environmental field felt like a natural move,” she said.

She earned a bachelor’s degree in biology from the University of Puget Sound and a master’s in environmental science and management from the Bren School at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

Betz, who specializes in water supply infrastructure projects, notes that while working as an environmental consultant can be difficult, especially when it comes to permitting, she appreciates being able to work with project teams to avoid and minimize environmental impacts and still meet design and construction goals.

“Finding that balance between protecting resources and building a successful project is what I enjoy most,” she said, adding complex projects are a particular favorite. “It means there are always new and interesting problems to solve and I get a lot of satisfaction out of finding creative solutions to problems and feeling that sense of accomplishment when you’ve successfully finished a particularly difficult or complicated project.”

Her portfolio includes the new Willamette Water Supply System, which will provide water to more than 300,000 Washington County residents and some of the state’s largest employers for the next 100 years.

Betz is a board member and vice president of Women in the Environment’s Portland chapter, which supports and provides opportunities for women in the environmental profession to thrive personally and professionally. She also volunteers with the Oregon Wildlife Foundation’s Harborton Frog Shuttle, an all-volunteer effort to save a remnant population of Northern red-legged frogs in Forest Park.

“Sarah has grown into and thrived in every leadership role that she has accepted,” said Jennifer Miller, a DEA vice president and the Oregon Region Market Leader of its Water and Environment Business Unit. “She’s taken on tremendous challenges by taking a deep breath, reaching deep and finding the tenacity and grit that makes Sarah an absolute phenom.”

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You will find few people who are more appreciative of the opportunities they’ve been given in life than Al Barkouli, the CEO of David Evans and Associates.

From humble beginnings in the North African country of Libya all the way to becoming the head of a nationally respected multidisciplinary firm, Barkouli has eagerly taken advantage of those opportunities to not only advance his career but make those around him better.

“What we do here is help other people, and being recognized isn’t really the goal,” said Barkouli. “It’s been a really nice journey, and this is the land of opportunity in many ways for me. But part of what’s different is for me, at least, I approach a lot of this with a deep sense of gratitude. Even with the challenges and difficulties there is something to be grateful for.”

Barkouli grew up in Libya at the same time as the country’s ruling leader, Muammar Gaddafi, was consolidating his power, expanding the country’s oil industry and increasing its citizens’ wealth. This opened up the chance for promising students like Barkouli to attend university abroad as recipients of scholarships funded by the Libyan government.

“I’ve always been interested in engineering from the time I was a teenager,” he said. “So that was a really great moment when I found I was going to the U.S. to study engineering.”

He came to the U.S. in the summer of 1977, and he found himself headed to Portland.

“A bunch of my friends ended up here in Portland,” he recounted. “I came to visit in the summer of 1977, the weather was nice, and I loved it here. Portland was a great city and I decided to apply at Portland State University.”

He went on to pursue postgraduate studies at PSU and took a job with Washington County when he completed his studies. In 1988 he began work as an engineer-in-training for what was then the relatively new hotshot engineering and consulting firm David Evans and Associates. From there, he moved steadily up the ladder from professional engineer and project manager to chief operating officer and finally the firm’s CEO.

During his time, Barkouli has specialized in transportation engineering and has worked on some of the largest, most consequential projects in the metro region. Most significantly, he has served either as project manager or principal-in-charge for DEA’s roles in Trimet’s MAX Blue and Red and Green light rail lines.

“He’s made such tremendous contributions to the infrastructure of the Portland metro area,” said Valerie Evans, director of organizational development for DEA.

Evans noted that Barkouli also makes time for plenty of service work, and works with the Oregon Community Foundation, the PSU Foundation board of trustees, and with the Lewis and Clark College Sustainability Council.

“Al is a lifelong learner,” Evans said. “Not only is he a professional engineer, he’s a deeply caring individual that he cares about each of us as individuals, not just as employees.”

Like many icons of the industry, Barkouli also loves his role as a mentor for younger professionals.

“That’s very, very enjoyable and gratifying,” he said. “If you think about it, there’s nothing more important than the human capital side of this. Projects come and go, but trying to influence the next generation and giving them the opportunity and environment in which they can do great things for our society is my way of making a difference.”

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Neal Collins began his career in sustainable development as a Peace Corps volunteer in Moldova and worked in heritage and culture conservation in India and marine conservation work and climate change adaption research in the Maldives. While human and planetary health have always been an essential value, nonprofit work didn’t pay very well.

Collins and his wife, Alissa, decided to get jobs in real estate to earn money for their sustainability and conservation efforts. They started by buying and renovating rental properties and got their licenses to be realtors and property managers. Soon after, they opened a brokerage and managed several hundred properties worth millions of dollars.

“We hated it and we pretty much burned it to the ground,” Collins said, adding they started Latitude in 2015. Latitude is a regenerative-focused real estate sales, consulting and development firm. Regenerative real estate is defined as the intersection between health and wellness, sustainability, community orientation, ecological integration and beauty.

Collins and his team are Living Future Accredited with the International Living Future Institute. Collins said he is trying to bring more mindfulness to a transactional industry and get people to think deeper.

“The web of life is all connected and it’s a hard game when you want to be a change-maker,” he said. “I love aligning our values and our mission with what I think the world truly needs. Our clients seek us out to create an environment in which they and the world thrive. It really helps me get out of bed in the morning.”

Alissa Collins described Neal as “a visionary who works so hard. He’s so humble. He’s my partner in life and in business, and I really respect and admire him. He’s someone who looks for the win-win. He’s respectful and he will never make it difficult for someone else, especially in real estate which can get very emotional. He’s level-headed and cool, calm and collected. His head is in the right place and he leads with his spirit.”
Neal Collins has also launched the Regenerative Real Estate podcast, which has attracted top leadership in the green building sector.

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In architecture school they tell you about design, theory and how to approach design problems. But they don’t talk much about construction technology or the ins and outs of putting together a building.

With a background in commercial construction as a cost estimator, as well as a degree in architecture, Rich Brooks has always felt like he has an advantage over other designers.

“I always felt like it’s if you ask an artist to paint a portrait,” said Brooks, a principal at multidisciplinary firm CIDA. “You find an artist who really knows how to work with his media. And our media is bricks and steel and things that go into a building. If you don’t know how these things work and interact with each other, I don’t know how you can ever be a designer who can design buildings that are economical as much as they can be.”

That multifaceted approach has served Brooks well during his 34 years in the industry, the last eight with CIDA’s Portland office. It also has given him the depth of knowledge that has allowed him to become a valued mentor and teacher, not only at CIDA, but at Portland State University, where he spent several years as an adjunct professor at the school of architecture.

“What makes Rich special is his desire to help, and in that comes a lot of growth for our younger staff,” said Jennifer Beattie, CIDA’s president. “We joke that if Rich works with them he finds the path to bring out the brilliance in them. Sometimes it takes someone like Rich to do that; he’s a strong personality, but what’s interesting is his compassion and desire to teach comes to the forefront.”

As his career has gone on, this has actually become his primary focus, both at CIDA and through the National Council of Architecture Registration Boards’ Architectural Experience Program.

“I always felt our job as architects is to train our replacements,” Brooks said. “I like to work with interns, because they have very good ideas and a lot of times they are very creative and fresh out of school with interesting approaches to design. They make really good raw material, but they do need to learn more about how to actually turn their designs into something that somebody can build. I’ve enjoyed that role.”

Despite his aptitude as an educator, Brooks still enjoys working in the field designing buildings and finding solutions for his clients. His favorite projects to date have all involved renovations, improvements or re-purposing existing buildings. Whether it’s a century-old powerhouse, an addition to an existing building or a new build, he usually gets called upon to work on the most unusual or difficult design projects.
“I end up doing an awful lot of stuff that everyone describes as their add-on,” he said. “‘This isn’t normal, you better give it to Rich.’”

Beattie said the project that comes to mind is Maxim, a three-story addition to a Beaverton chip manufacturing plant. The project involved not just difficult aesthetic work, but also complex technical specifications demanded by both the client and the high technology program.

“It was CIDA’s first LEED project, and he was able to navigate that,” she said. “It’s very complicated, it had stakeholder groups in Portland, in California and the kind of client explaining there was an ethos that needed to be adhered to, and he navigated all of that to have a very successful project.”

This project is still used at CIDA as an example of how to successfully perform the role of client relations and lead designer at the same time.
“He came in as a teacher and I think that’s what an icon can do,” Beattie said. “They bring the experience they have and people catapult off that experience and I think that’s what makes Rich special. He has the ability to make good people better, and better people the best.”

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Bryan Cook started his career as a field engineer for an international chemical company. He enjoyed building in his personal life but didn’t imagine it as his profession until he toured a job site with his girlfriend, an intern with JE Dunn in Colorado Springs.

Since joining the company himself, Cook has done projects in Denver, Spokane and Pendleton. In Portland, his work includes the Collaborative Life Sciences Building & Skourtes Tower for Oregon Health & Science University, Portland State University and Oregon State University.

“Each of these projects brought opportunities to experience new regions, new teams and new challenges,” he said. “I’ve been a part of some great work extending from Hillsboro to Santa Clara, California, to Malta, New York. Our geographic footprint continues to expand and I keep getting to experience something new everywhere we go.”

Cook said that overseeing a large team allows him to watch young professionals grow and develop.

“It’s truly amazing how much faster they learn than I did; I’m constantly surprised by what I see,” he said, adding he also enjoys reviewing drawings. “It’s like putting together a puzzle, and as you read everything you can see the ideas come to life.”

Mario Sanchez, senior estimating engineer, said he admires Cook’s intention.

“Bryan is intentional about learning, about teaching and about leading. His fervor for knowledge is intentional. Bryan is a foundational piece for any and all projects that I’ve worked on with him. This is what I admire most about Bryan, his relentless intention to make others around him better.”

A frequent guest speaker for college courses, including Portland Community College, Cook often serves as a mentor. Elizabeth Rowe, estimating engineer, said she respects his ability to solve “upstream” problems and share that knowledge with others.

“He teaches others to find as many problems in drawings and blueprints before construction has started rather than reacting to the problem downstream, thus, saving time, money and valuable resources,” she said.

Cook’s volunteer service includes building houses for Habitat for Humanity with a team from JE Dunn. He also sorts food and works in the learning garden at the Oregon Food Bank.

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When it comes to transforming lives for the better, few people can hold a candle to Constructing Hope Executive Director Pat Daniels.

In her role she is a mentor, teacher, advocate and friend, not to mention a passionate fundraiser with a sharp business mind. In her 15 years with Constructing Hope, she has helped the organization grow from a small faith-based group conducting construction training courses for low-income and minority Portland residents into an independent non-profit group certified by the State of Oregon as a construction pre-apprenticeship program.

Along the way she has helped lift countless individuals and families out of poverty and into living wage jobs through the skilled trades, and she does it all while staying out of the spotlight and focusing on the hard work of promoting diversity, equity and inclusion in the trades while also guiding formerly incarcerated students into full-time employment.

“All of our participants are low-income, coming from incarceration and long-term unemployed,” Daniels said. “To see their careers change and see their family structures change, that’s probably the most rewarding thing for me. They become leaders in their families and for their relatives.”

Constructing Hope grew out of a 1990s program started by the Irvington Covenant Church in North Portland. Church members addressing the negative effects of gentrification on the large minority population in North and Northeast formed the Irvington Covenant Community Development Corp. in 1995. Daniels came on board to help with fundraising for the corporation’s budding construction training program in 2005.

“I fell in love with the work they were doing,” Daniels said.

Just two years later it was certified by the state as a construction pre-apprenticeship program. It gained non-profit status in 2010 when it reorganized as an independent organization and formally changed its name to Constructing Hope.

“She doesn’t stop,” said Mel Jones, Diversity, Equity and Inclusion director for J.E. Dunn Construction and chairman of the Constructing Hope Board of Directors. “Her constant drive to find money, her constant drive to find good staff people, her constant drive to expand the program; it’s not enough to bring in ex-convicts and give them a trade. She does the social part, too. She helps them find the apartments, helps them with expungements. I don’t know where she gets the energy.”

Daniels said much of her motivation comes from her time working in human resources for the Port of Portland.

“You are trained that if someone had a felony they were not going to be hired,” she said. “They could be the best hire, but you’re only looking for that box. I just would be like, ‘Why don’t they get it together?’”

That changed over time as she realized those same people, when left with no opportunities, often fell back into crime, addiction and incarceration.

“I wanted to change that after I saw people and I heard their stories,” she said. “I thought about what I was and what I did, and I wanted to make a change.”

Oregon Tradeswomen Inc. Executive Director Kelly Kupcak and Daniels quickly became friends when Kupcak moved to Portland to take over that role three years ago.

“It’s not a job for her, it really is a calling,” Kupcak said. “I remember meeting her and she was like ‘What you see is what you get.’ She’s a dedicated, hardworking, passionate person who really believes in the work she’s doing and is really committed to equity, and she’s never stepped back from the mission.”

The mission of changing lives to prevent that fall back into the justice system is everything for Daniels.

“That’s what makes me say ‘I don’t want to see people get to that point,” she said. “If they get out and get to our program, I want to treat them with respect — the respect they never got.”

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Abbey Cwiek-Garrett describes herself as a tactile person who has always been interested in art in all medias, joking that the “Do not touch” signs in art galleries are for people like her.

“I grew up sketching and painting, and became very interested in architecture in high school,” said Cwiek-Garrett, adding she zeroed in on interior design. “I love having an impact on someone’s every day experience, what they touch, pass through, engage with. Design at a human scale is what keeps me fired up.”

She earned a bachelor’s degree in interior design at Washington State University and joined DLR’s Portland office in spring 2018 after transferring from its Seattle office. Her nearly 20 years of diverse project experience includes a youth detention center for the Oregon Youth Authority.

“Seeing how much the staff genuinely cared about the youth, supported them and cheered them on to re-enter society with skills and confidence was amazing to witness, and getting to work firsthand with the youth as we crafted their future space was eye-opening in a life-changing way,” she said. “I’m very proud of this facility and the purpose it serves. It has become a national example in its field, and the love that went into the process is a testimony to that.”

Colleague Jay Gelose, a fellow principal at DLR Group, said Cwiek-Garrett brings an open-mindedness to how she collaborates with project teams and called it a “welcome attitude that embraces all the positive possibilities instead of focusing on the things that could go wrong.”

“Her collaborative process within our company, the way she systematically listens, engages and integrates diverse conversations around design, has changed the way we do our work,” he said. “Abbey is someone who, no matter what I am trying to accomplish, I would want on my team. She is bright, energizing and makes any team better. Clients love working with her.”

Cwiek-Garrett is active in university student mentoring and has sat on the student portfolio review panels for WSU and University of Oregon for many years. She is also an active member of the Oregon chapter of CoreNet.

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Nancy Fishman started working in Portland at a pivotal time for the city’s building industry.

It was the 1980s, and Portland icons such as Big Pink, the Portland Building and more were being constructed across the city center. Despite the collapse of the timber industry and concurrent economic turmoil across the state, it was a great time to dive into architecture, construction and engineering.

Unlike most in those industries, however, Fishman started off as a journalist before making the jump to marketing, where she has carved out a storied career during the past three-plus decades with Portland firm ZGF Architects.

“I was at the 91��Ƶ over 40 years ago and a lot has changed since then,” Fishman said. “I was a 22-year-old psych major, and the editor at the time took a huge leap of faith hiring me as a clerk in the newsroom.”

During the next five years Fishman became a full-time reporter and then was promoted to news editor. It was through her coverage of Portland’s burgeoning architecture industry that she realized that was where she wanted to direct her talents.

“It was the coverage I did of architecture that made me realize I had a real passion for it,” she said.

Once she made the move to ZGF, Fishman never looked back. But she still approaches her job as marketing director from a journalistic point of view.

“It’s interesting,” she said. “I’ve always approached my role in marketing as a journalist, really, researching, asking questions, diving deep to understand issues and what a client is looking for. Then I craft the stories that help support our teams in winning new work. It seemed like a pretty ideal fit.”

That curiosity and interest in the design profession sets her apart from many of her peers, said Bob Packard, a managing partner at ZGF, and the person who took a chance on a journalist and hired her.

“She’s tireless energy for sure,” Packard said. “I think one of the key attributes of her that is noticed by partners and all my colleagues at ZGF over all these years is her connection with clients and her ability to really understand what clients want and developing the trust of clients.”

Her passion for design, first cultivated at the 91��Ƶ as a journalist, also plays a role in this, Packard added.

“She’s very interested in the design profession, as interested in it as any of the other professionals in the office,” he said. “And that has also been an incredible asset to the firm. Because of that she’s not only been a leader within the firm, but in the profession in Portland and nationally.”

As much as she loves design itself, Fishman also has grown into her role as a leader and mentor as her career has advanced.

“I do strive to be a mentor and I love working with the next generation and a lot of the younger members of my team,” she said. “I’m still fairly hands-on though, so in some ways it’s as a role model hopefully. I certainly had wonderful mentors in my early career, so it’s nice to be able to be at the stage of being able to give back. But I’m still doing what I do and finding many challenges in it and it keeps me energized.”

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