Carolyn Shames is President and CEO of Shames Construction, where she has led the company for four decades as one of the earliest women to reach the top of the construction industry. Her architectural background gives her a combination of creative and analytical skills she applies to strategic planning, project management, and organizational development.
Shames runs the company around employee autonomy and collaborative teamwork, encouraging her team to make decisions they believe are right while still working closely together. She has spent 26 years in a Vistage/TEC peer group, which she credits with sharpening her approach to business management and developing people.
She treats long-tenured employees, some with the company for thirty years, more like extended family than staff, an approach she traces back to values passed down from her parents and folded into how she runs the business today.
