Breaking New Ground

Civil Engineer Cheryl Mckissack Daniel Grew Up In The Construction Biz. Now She’s A Leader In The Field.

- Jihan Thompson

It’s safe to say that most young girls don’t spend their weekends walking through construction sites in a hard hat, but Cheryl McKissack Daniel did. In 1905 her grandfather founded McKissack & McKissack Architects & Engineers, which provided the blueprint for her career. The outfit is one of the oldest minority-owned professional design and construction firms in the United States, and when Daniel’s mom took the helm after her husband’s sudden illness, it became a woman-run construction company too. In time Daniel would step up to head the family business herself, transforming it into McKissack & McKissack. In an industry in which there are still too few women and people of color, the president and CEO shares how she won multibillion-dollar contracts and made her mark.

ESSENCE: Tell us about your path in the construction world.

CHERYL McKISSACK DANIEL: When I was 12, my twin sister and I started going to work on Saturdays with our father, who was an architect and ran the family business. We would trace documents and walk construction sites. When it came time to go to college, my father told us, “You can go anywhere you want in the world, but I’m only paying for you to go to Howard University to study architecture.”

We ended up at Howard, but I didn’t want to be an architect. I majored in engineering and went on to get a master’s degree in civil engineering. My first job was as a civil engineer designing silos for missiles.

ESSENCE: Why did you decide to leave that industry for the family business?