Eric Foster spent 42 years at Swinerton - one of the largest 100% employee-owned construction companies in the US - rising from project engineer in 1982 to CEO in January 2020, the company's 12th chief executive in its 132-year history. A UC Berkeley civil engineering graduate, he led Swinerton through the COVID-19 pandemic, oversaw the launch of mass timber subsidiary Timberlab, and expanded the firm to $4.3 billion in revenue across 20 locations before retiring on January 11, 2024. His career touched landmark San Francisco structures including SFMOMA and the historic Monadnock Building.
Jeremy Suard is the Co-Founder and CEO of Exodigo, a Palo Alto-based deep tech company applying AI and multi-sensor fusion to solve one of infrastructure's oldest problems: accurately mapping what's underground before drilling through it. Born in France and raised partly in Israel, Suard served nearly eight years in Israeli Military Intelligence Unit 81, directing AI and signal processing R&D teams and becoming the most decorated technology major in the IDF. He co-founded Exodigo in 2021 with fellow IDF alumni Ido Gonen and Yogev Shifman, channeling classified sensor-fusion expertise into a commercial platform that scans the ground non-intrusively, locates 20-30% more utility lines than premium competitors, and has raised over $271 million in funding to date.
Neno Duplan is the founder and CEO of Locus Technologies, a Mountain View-based company he bootstrapped in 1997 to become one of the world's first cloud-based environmental, health, and safety (EHS) software providers. Born in Croatia and trained as a civil engineer, Duplan earned his Ph.D. at the University of Zagreb, an M.S. from Carnegie Mellon, and advanced management training at Stanford. He pioneered the commercial SaaS model for environmental data management - deploying the world's first such product in 1999 - and has spent nearly three decades helping governments, utilities, and corporations track, manage, and report their environmental footprints. With more than 30 technical papers published, 11,000+ active users, and a 98% customer renewal rate, Duplan has built Locus into a durable, self-funded software company at the intersection of environmental science and enterprise technology.
Alyson Watson is the CEO and Chair of the Board of Woodard & Curran, a Portland, Maine-based integrated science, engineering, design-build, and operations firm specializing in water and environmental challenges. A Stanford-trained chemical engineer and licensed PE, she became the firm's third CEO in 2021 — and its first woman to hold that title — after more than 20 years leading water resources projects and building environmental consulting teams across the western United States. A self-described 'water brat' with roots in the industry, Watson is a passionate advocate for clean water access, outcome-based contracting, and employee ownership, guiding a firm of 1,300 people across 27 offices nationwide.