Employee Spotlight: Jamie DePaul
If you ask Jamie DePaul how she got into construction, it doesn’t start with a lifelong plan or a family business. It starts with her being late to class.
She was a sophomore at the University of Maryland, hustling into a business class, when she crossed paths with someone recruiting for College Works Painting. She filled out a form, got a call a few days later, and said yes. That yes turned into two formative years where Jamie found her footing, learned how to lead, and proved she could deliver. She finished her intern year ranked third in the country and earned a national customer service award. More importantly, she found confidence in herself.
Today, Jamie oversees the southern install region at Home Genius Exteriors, leading a team of about 25 people. What’s striking is that most of that team is made up of women. There was no grand plan to make that happen. Jamie will tell you it just did. She hires people who care, who work hard, and who want to grow. Gender was never the point. People were.
Leadership, for Jamie, isn’t just about getting jobs done. It’s about responsibility. She feels a real sense of weight and pride in being someone others look to. She wants her team to succeed at work, but she also wants them to become stronger, more confident people outside of it. That balance between professional growth and personal growth is something she cares deeply about.
That mindset is part of what led to her being selected for a leadership development cohort with Owens Corning. The program brings together leaders from a small group of top contractor partners and focuses on how to lead better, not just manage better. Jamie spent months learning, applying those lessons with her own team, and ultimately presenting how she put them into practice.
Even outside of work, Jamie keeps pushing herself. During the pandemic, while working remotely, she moved to Manhattan and earned her master’s degree from Columbia University. She balanced full-time leadership with graduate school because learning matters to her. Growth matters to her.
Jamie’s story isn’t about checking a box or breaking into an industry for the sake of it. It’s about saying yes to opportunities, showing up consistently, and taking care of the people around you. She’s proof that there’s room in construction for different paths, different voices, and different styles of leadership. And for the women watching from the sidelines, wondering if there’s a place for them here, Jamie’s answer is simple. There is.
