This episode features Heather Calvert, Chief Operating Officer at CORE, sharing how her firm intentionally centers people, equity, and psychological safety while still delivering complex projects on time and on budget. Heather walks through CORE’s journey from scrappy startup to “thirteen‑year‑old teenager” firm, including the painful inflection points of rapid COVID‑era growth and what they had to redesign to truly scale. She dives into their equity‑driven promotion and feedback systems, explaining how crowd‑sourced input and collaborative performance conversations help reduce bias and burnout. 

Heather also unpacks the delivery pressures facing AEC firms today and why real‑time communication, trust‑building with clients, and developing engineers’ soft skills are just as critical as technical excellence. Throughout the conversation, she offers practical examples leaders can use to build cultures where people feel safe speaking up, learning from misalignment, and actually “living their core” at work.