Katy Abraham had already enjoyed successful careers in both the natural gas and pet care industries by the time her father, Keith Kothmann, approached her about taking over Construction Cost Management Inc., the Fort Worth, Texas-based company he had founded three-plus decades earlier.
Kothmann wanted to step back from business operations at CCM so he could focus on the highly technical, customer-facing work that made him something of a legend in his field: estimating construction project costs.
Abraham did not grow up in her father’s company. She began her career in retail sales, working for home décor chain The Bombay Company. A chance encounter at a charity event led to a new calling: selling water pumps used for hydraulic fracturing in Texas’ Barnett Shale.
She was good at it and, for a time, it was a lucrative business. But when the natural gas industry experienced a downturn, she was forced to make another abrupt career transition — this time becoming a breed specialist for a companion animal company.
“I loved the job,” she says. “I loved working with veterinarians, and I loved working with dogs and cats. And that’s where I was when my dad asked me if I wanted to buy CCM.”
At first, her answer was a hard no.
For one thing, she didn’t have her father’s technical background. For another, “I get to play with dogs and cats all day long,” she says.
But gradually, the idea of applying her business development skills to CCM, along with the potential marketing advantages of making the business a certified woman-owned company, began to sound exciting.
She purchased the company from her father and became CEO in 2012, initially hedging her bets by continuing to pull double duty at her pet industry job for about a year and a half.
To Kothmann, who moved to a vice president role, his daughter’s background in sales, marketing, planning and management made her a perfect fit to lead CCM.
Unfortunately, not everyone at the company felt the same way.
Almost immediately, Abraham began butting heads with one non-family employee who questioned her qualifications.
Finally, the issue reached its boiling point.
“We were having a lot of problems, just the two of us,” she recalls. “We could not understand each other. And he finally did say, ‘I cannot work for you. You’re not even an estimator.’”
Abraham pauses a beat, then adds, “We fulfilled his dream.”
It’s certainly not uncommon for NextGens who take over a successful family business to encounter some skepticism — and maybe even outright allegations of nepotism — from inside and outside the organization. Most will tell you they feel obligated to work overtime, literally and figuratively, to establish credibility.
But for women who take the reins from their fathers in an industry like construction, skepticism often comes with an added dose of sexism, and the pressure to prove themselves can feel even more intense.
Fareeda Zakir joined her mother as co-owner of Orange Mirror and Glass in 2020 when her father died unexpectedly, shortly after being diagnosed with cancer. Zakir’s parents founded the company more than 30 years ago, after immigrating from Kenya to Orange County, Calif.
Zakir has been around the family business — which provides glass products like shower doors, mirrors, table tops, railing systems and storefronts to commercial and residential customers — since she was a toddler.
“Our business and our family were fully interconnected, and our employees are considered part of our family, too,” she says. “Many of the people that work with me now were there when I was just a child. One of our managers actually used to push me in my stroller when I was a baby.”
Her father had always hoped she would take over the business. Still, Zakir did not expect it to happen so soon.
“I thought I would have many more years to learn from my dad before having to take the reins,” she says.
Despite Zakir’s lifetime of experience around the business and the fact that her mother was involved in Orange Mirror from its inception (and had worked for her own father’s glass business in Kenya), acceptance by the broader industry has not been universal.
“It was and still remains a struggle to be a woman business leader in a traditionally male-dominated industry,” Zakir says. “Every day, I feel that people doubt my abilities to be able to perform in the role and doubt my expertise and knowhow. Their first belief is that I must not have the expertise. It takes constant effort to demonstrate my skill sets, and there is much energy spent on persuading others that I am fully capable of being in this role.”
‘Unapologetically taking up space’
Knee-jerk reactions to Zakir from some in the construction industry also tend to be influenced by her traditional Dawoodi Bohra Muslim attire. She wears a two-piece dress called a rida, which is known for its bright colors and decorative patterns.
“Earlier in my career, I would sit in the back office, as opposed to the front reception area and showroom, because I was worried about how my dress might be perceived by our customers,” she says, recalling the stories her parents would tell about the discrimination they faced in the industry early on. “However, with time, I realized that I need to own it and be confident in who I am.”
Often, when she visits job sites, general contractors will emerge from their trailers to ask if she’s lost.
“Now I just tell them that I’m not lost — I am exactly where I belong,” Zakir says. “I have decided that I am going to unapologetically take up space, because that’s the only way we change stereotypes.”
As Zakir’s experiences and Abraham’s early encounter with that insubordinate CCM employee demonstrate, establishing one’s authority as a woman in the construction field often requires setting clear boundaries and sending clear messages.
Abraham says she first learned this during her time in the natural gas industry.
“In many instances, if I drove out to a drilling rig, I would be the only woman there. And honestly, probably the only one they’d seen in months,” she recalls, adding, “So I learned very quickly to be able to communicate how I would be spoken to and how I wouldn’t be. And we ended up really having great relationships and really being very respectful of each other.”
At CCM, Abraham doesn’t work on construction sites. The company’s clients, she says, are typically more white-collar. But that, of course, doesn’t necessarily eliminate bias.
“I think, in the beginning, I had a double challenge because I was Keith’s daughter, so a lot of people assumed he gave me the business,” she says. “A lot of people assumed I wasn’t experienced enough, I didn’t have the skills to do the job. And also, I’m not very tall.”
Abraham has done plenty to silence the naysayers since taking over as CEO. She improved cash management, streamlined systems and focused heavily on new business development, growing CCM’s sales by 500% in her first three years.
Still, she says, “sometimes I find myself being spoken to like a child.”
“But,” she adds, “what I have found to be true is that if I just sort of slightly bark back, we can all get on the same page.”
Kelly Smith, CEO of the second-generation All Tech Electric in Lewisville, Texas, has also dealt with assumptions that her father simply gifted her his successful electrical services business.
This, despite her own background in electrical engineering and extensive experience managing projects for large corporations.
“I’m very clear about, ‘Look, I bought my dad’s partner out. It wasn’t handed to me. I’ve worked hard to get where I am. I still have a loan that I’m paying off,’” Smith says.
Smith worked for her father, Mike O’Hara, as a teenager but never had plans to take over his business. She studied electrical engineering in college and then went on to a career in corporate project management, which eventually brought her to Dallas.
At the time, All Tech operated in Ohio and Nashville, but Smith’s parents decided to join their daughter in Texas. Soon after, O’Hara’s partner at All Tech began looking to exit the business.
Without a clear succession plan, O’Hara knew he’d eventually have to either sell All Tech or wind it down. That’s when the idea of Smith buying a controlling stake in the company first took shape. As with Abraham, it took some serious reflection, but ultimately Smith decided she would regret passing up the opportunity.
She left her corporate job behind, took out loans and became the majority owner of All Tech.
Taking over from her father, who had decades of experience as an electrician, was admittedly daunting and Smith struggled for a foothold until she received some key advice from some mentors: Don’t try to be your dad.
“They said, ‘You just need to be you, and you need to run the business how you would,’” she says, adding, “Once I got the confidence, I did the things that I thought would establish credibility.”
She began visiting job sites, introducing herself to clients and delivering quarterly state-of-the-company speeches to her employees.
Smith says the experience has taught her that women leaders must be “authentic and confident” in “who they are and what value they bring.”
‘Imposter syndrome is a thing’
Shutting down critics and skeptics is one thing. But sometimes it’s the internal monologue that needs silencing.
“Part of my own self-doubt certainly stems from the broader conversation around nepotism and the notion that I was given this opportunity without having to earn it,” says Zakir. “While I certainly agree that I am fortunate, I also earn my keep every day. I care deeply about this business that my father built and want his legacy to continue.”
Abraham acknowledges that “imposter syndrome is a thing, especially with women-owned businesses.”
“I don’t know why we do that to ourselves. I don’t know if it’s a societal thing or what, but I really was very intimidated by that,” she says, adding that, to this day, she gives herself pep talks and does “power poses” in the mirror before heading into meetings where she’s anxious about being perceived as inexperienced or unknowledgeable on a specific topic.
But she also came to an important realization early in her tenure at CCM that helped ease those fears.
About 12 years ago, the company began work on a massive project replacing the Trans-Canyon waterline in the Grand Canyon. Abraham, brand new to CCM at the time, was invited to the canyon to meet with the project team and the superintendent of national parks.
“My dad didn’t say, ‘Sit there and be quiet,’ but I kind of felt like I had to. I was just learning,” she recalls of the meeting. “But everyone kept using these acronyms, and acronyms are the worst part of this industry. I mean, I don’t know why people speak like that.”
Unable to follow the discussion, she finally interrupted.
“I was like, ‘I’m sorry, what is TCWL?’— which now I would be mortified to ask, because clearly it means ‘Trans-Canyon waterline,’” she says, and pauses for another beat. “But the two men talking yelled out two different things.”
The meeting came to a screeching halt.
“We had to take a break so that everyone could figure out what the hell they were talking about,” she laughs.
It proved to be an important lesson for navigating the industry: acknowledge what you don’t know and be open to learning — but don’t be intimidated.
“A lot of times I can fake it until I make it,” she says. “I’m over here Googling something like, ‘Oh yeah, yeah, I totally get that.’ [But] I realized that it’s not just me that’s doing that. It’s not just women doing that. Everyone does that.”