Holly Alexander, Concorde Construction

Position: director of business and marketing,
Concorde Construction

Lives in: SouthPark

Family: husband, Fred;
children, Calvin, 4, June, 1

As 2011 drew to a close, Holly Alexander looked back at the year and smiled. It had been one of the most challenging years of her life, but it had also been one of the most satisfying.

In her job as director of business and marketing for Concorde Construction, she experienced firsthand the impact of the recession on the construction industry.

As president of the 240-member Charlotte chapter of Commercial Real Estate Women, she led a group whose members were leaving the business and the group, including the incoming president.

On a personal level, she helped her grandmother – now a cancer survivor – deal with lymphoma.

Alexander did all that with two young children, including an infant she was still nursing.

“Today, I feel like the same person, but with a heightened sense of confidence, not just in myself, but mostly in others,” she said. “It is the people who you surround yourself with and the decisions you make that create your path. Being able to continually find happiness, implement it and live by it is by far my most significant personal accomplishment.”

In her job with Concorde, Alexander said she maintained a high conversion rate when going after new business and made the company an innovator in recycling construction waste. The firm – with a program she initiated – now recycles about 89 percent of its waste compared with the national average of 80 percent.

During Alexander’s tenure as president of CREW, the group hired and trained a new administrator and introduced a new brand with a new website and newsletter. In 2011, Alexander met with almost two-thirds of the members to make sure CREW was meeting their needs.

“Each day I smiled. Each day I did what I said I was going to do. Each day I loved. And each day I worked hard to change the scenery for the positive in everything I did,” she said. “I attribute that attitude to my parents, who taught me to see the positive and to have faith to get through.”

Alexander earned a bachelor’s degree in political science and communication studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

But construction has always been her first love, she said. Her grandfather was a contractor in Charlotte, where she grew up.

As a child, “I was always drawn to building things and built doghouses,” she said. “I realized how much I love seeing things get built.”

Most of Alexander’s career has been with engineering, architecture and construction companies. She joined Concorde in 2007, when she moved back to Charlotte from Atlanta.

– BEA QUIRK