CEOs Speak

David joined ENCON full-time in 1993 and worked his way up to president. He’s most thankful for having an incredible working relationship with his father Marty — who founded the business in 1968 — for over 26 years which is rare for generational family businesses.

David’s vision is for ENCON to continue to lead the industry over the next 50 years, both in the use of technology, growing the team, and working with customers who appreciate the value of partnering with ENCON. “I give so much credit to our team and am really proud of their work and the degree of complex projects they have completed,” says David. “Some of our top performers have been with the company over 40 years.”

While Marty taught David to be a problem-solver early on, at the same time his mother Micki taught him compassion. This “figure it out” mentality mixed with his compassion for people and charity is a common thread throughout the company, and a value instilled in their team. While ENCON has always supported charities and the local community, David has taken it to the next level with the creation of ENCON’s Rock & Bowl charity bowling event to benefit the Make -A-Wish Foundation, and David was recently named Chairman of The Board of Make-A-Wish New Jersey. David and the team are proud to have donated over half a million dollars to charities nationwide.

Sam Baker is the CFO and co-founder of Farm Flight. Sam oversees the day to day operations while also developing business strategies and key partnerships. His vision for the company is to make data-driven farming possible for every agricultural worker in the United States so that they can feed the rapidly growing population.

Fig partners with nonprofits to create socially responsible financial products for underbanked Americans. They started as a collaboration with the United Way and their latest product is called Fig36, which has been called Shopify for lending. Fig36 provides turnkey lending-as-a-service solutions for nonprofits and local organizations that want to operate their own credit building programs.

Prior to starting Fig, Jeff worked at the Boston Consulting Group in their Consumer practice area. He received his MBA from the Wharton School and was an ESPN All American Swimmer while pursuing his BS in Chemical Engineering from MIT.

Kristy Lewis is the Founder/CEO of Quinn Foods LLC, based in Louisville, CO. Kristy, mom of three little boys, and wife of Coulter Lewis, Founder/CEO Sunday, launched Quinn Foods with no prior food industry experience just three days after her first son, Quinn, was born. She succeeded in her mission to clean up microwave popcorn by inventing a patented Pure Pop® microwave popcorn bag, the first bag without chemical or plastic coatings, such as PFOAs and PFCs. Kristy continued her mission of making better-for-you classic snacks (never compromising on flavor) by launching a line of gluten-free and grain-free pretzels. Since the beginning, Kristy has been a pioneer in ingredient transparency and is pushing for sustainable agriculture in the food industry. Quinn’s ‘Farm-to-Bag’ Policy connects consumers directly to the source where the ingredients come from and their ‘Be Better. Do Better.’ mission takes these ‘Farm-to-Bag’ relationships a step further by encouraging their growers to improve agricultural practices that will not only benefit them, but also the planet.

Christian is driven by a quest of disruption and innovation. He approaches each new undertaking — be it a design project, a business initiative, or an industry‑wide effort — with a desire to push boundaries, do it better, and solve tough challenges.

Throughout his efforts, he brings a balance of more than 25 years of experience working within the building industry along with an innate ability to think progressively, often times far beyond what others in the industry are thinking or doing.

It is this quest that brought him to Mancini more than five years ago. Leveraging the firm’s 100‑year‑history spanning architecture, interiors, and planning, Christian saw a unique opportunity to recalibrate the firm’s approach — emphasizing technology to transform the way designers across disciplines work — while capitalizing on its deep New York City roots and proven technical ability delivering built work. He set ambitious goals for the firm to revolutionize the way things are done and opened the call to action to every team member — from design to finance and from operations to marketing — to see that vision come to life. A year after joining the firm, he was appointed President and in 2017 became its majority shareholder. In all this time, he continuously pushed limits to elevate the firm by activating this vision.

Today, under Christian’s leadership, Mancini totals more than 90 designers across two regional offices — two‑and‑a‑half times the 35 designers in a single New York City office when he joined the firm in 2013 — all circling around the vision of being a technology‑first design firm. Each person is inspired to push the boundaries of technology to deliver better design solutions, better results for the firm’s clients, and better ways of doing things for the industry.

Today, Mancini continues to be recognized as an industry‑leader, pushing more and more boundaries to the brink of reinvention, thanks to Christian’s big vision and tireless efforts. One of many recognitions for this work was the firm being named a finalist at Commercial Observer’s Inaugural Innovator Awards in the Construction & Design Tech category among technology firms and start‑ups, not among other design firms — the ultimate confirmation that Christian’s big vision and ability to see it delivered is truly changing the way things are done.