CEO of McKissack & McKissack, Deryl McKissack, 62-year-old started her business with $1,000 now it brings in over $25 million a year. She said: ‘I just had to do this’. Deryl McKissack’s career is a culmination of effort from five generations. Deryl McKissack is the president and CEO of McKissack & McKissack, the Washington, D.C.-based construction management and design firm behind some of today’s most recognizable buildings from building the Smithsonian African American Museum of History and Culture to repairing the Abraham Lincoln and Thomas Jefferson memorials.
McKissack & McKissack legacy
The McKissack’s firm legacy dates back to her great-great grandfather Moses a skilled brick maker originally coming as slave in 1790 to U.S. His brick-making skills were passed down and cultivated from generation to generation. This prompted two of his grandsons to create a construction company in Tennessee, also called McKissack & McKissack.
The company which is based out of New York , remains in the family, and run by McKissack’s twin sister Cheryl.
Deryl McKissack was motivated by a desire to strike out on her own, and to see more Black women CEOs in the construction industry. She withdrew $1,000 from her savings account and launched her company in 1990. As per a report, today, Deryl McKissack’s company brings in between $25-$30 million per year, and manages $15 billion in projects with offices in Chicago, Dallas, Los Angeles and Baltimore.
McKissack says, ‘I had this burning passion … that I just had to do this’
Entrepreneurial journey McKissick
McKissack left an engineering job with a six-figure salary to launch her company, and quickly learned that even with a Howard University civil engineering degree and relevant work experience, attracting clients was difficult.
Lugging an old projector around, she presented slides of work she’d done for family members to help “sell my wares.” McKissack placed a job ad in the Washington Post, and hired an employee.
She had found it tough in the beginning, it took her almost 5 years to get her first $10,000 line of credit. Also she used her networking skills to land her company’s first project: doing interior work at her alma mater. McKissack and her lone employee did all the work themselves, with McKissack putting in 80 hours of labor per week, she says.
McKissack success story
One successful job led to another, and McKissack built a portfolio of work to show prospective clients. She applied for jobs as a federal contractor, getting her foot in the door to work on construction projects at the White House and U.S. Treasury building. Larger federal projects followed.
McKissack only paid herself $7,200 her first year in business, she says. Her second, $18,000. She finally paid herself a $100,000 salary after roughly ten years, she adds, prioritizing paying her employees over herself along the way.
McKissack says, ‘I haven’t made it until more Black [people] have made it’
Global construction industry
The global construction industry is projected to be worth $13.9 trillion by 2037, according to a 2023 report from market research firm Oxford Economics. Yet women still make up only 1.4% of construction CEOs worldwide, and Black women account for a fraction of that.
Despite the identical company names, McKissack and her sister do run separate businesses, but they’ve collaborated on several projects, and often “trade notes” with each other, she says.
A healthy support system is rare for most Black and women construction executives, largely because so few of them exist, McKissack says. Last year, she founded AEC Unites, a nonprofit that provides professional opportunities for Black talent in the architecture, engineering and construction industry.
She hopes, her daughter a bioengineering student at New York University could become the sixth generation of McKissacks in the construction industry.
“I tell her all the time that all roads lead to McKissack,” she says. “And I don’t care how she gets there.”
