“It started when I was around three or four years old: the building blocks corner was my daily hangout at school, and I tended to measure the success of my day by how much dirt I had to wash off each evening,” says Vice President Operations Europe, Calypso Kyriakopoulou, who has since leveraged her creativity and lifelong passion for the nitty-gritty to forge a fulfilling career in construction.

Since 2014, Calypso has worked out of Hill International’s office in Athens, Greece, supporting some of Hill’s most high-profile assignments in Europe. Her portfolio includes the reconstruction of Four Seasons Astir Palace, a technical assistance assignment with the Albanian Ministry of Transportation, Hill’s framework agreement with Fraport Greece for their European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) compliance program and, most recently, projects associated with the Ellinikon’s Infrastructure and Landscape Program.

As Vice President Operations Europe, Calypso combines a variety of management and technical skills to help make certain our teams provide effective management support and our clients’ projects progress as envisioned. She is responsible for working with clients, developing an understanding of their project needs, orchestrating project teams and plans, and negotiating task orders and contracts. Calypso also provides direct supervision of project and construction management teams on multiple projects, helping assure quality and consistency of performance in line with Hill standards of excellence, client expectations, and industry best practices.

Finding the Right Path

While Calypso calls project and construction management a perfect fit, her path to this niche in the industry was not always linear. “I definitely took a few detours—all extremely valuable—to get where I am now,” she says.

After graduating with a degree in applied mathematics and a minor in engineering mechanics from Columbia University, Calypso followed her passion for the environment and completed a post-graduate degree in atmospheric sciences at the University of California, Los Angeles. “Even though I’m still very interested in the subject, the path of scientific research didn’t energize me,” says Calypso, who decided to return to the building blocks by pursuing a second master’s degree in construction management at the University of Southern California.

“As soon as I started my first internship in the construction industry, something clicked and I knew it was perfect fit for me,” she adds.

First Steps in the Field

Calypso’s first job in construction was a field/office engineering position for a general contractor in Los Angeles. In the field, she picked up valuable experience working under pressure, addressing problems with practical solutions, managing tradesperson staff, and strategizing to meet the project’s budget, schedule, quality, and other requirements. “Coming out of school, this was a very intense, demanding work environment,” she says.

In addition to the work itself, Calypso faced other challenges as she made a place for herself in the industry. “One of the biggest issues when I first started working in the field was finding a tool belt that fit,” she explains. “I’m 5’3” on a good day. At that size, it’s tough to find a belt where the hammer won’t hit your calves when you walk and the pockets don’t hang around your knees.”

Calypso says that another challenge was finding the right balance between having confidence in her abilities and learning from more experienced colleagues. “I was a young, recent graduate managing experienced tradespeople,” she says. “I had to be confident to do my job, but I also had to learn a lot on the fly. It was, at times, challenging to find the right balance.”

Perhaps the biggest professional challenge involved Calypso’s big move to Greece, where she started to work in cost estimating and proposals. In addition to learning more about the new role, Calypso also had to build up her knowledge of differing local construction conditions and industry practices, such as the typical roles and responsibilities of various project stakeholders, common construction methods and materials, procurement approaches, and the local regulatory environment.

Despite the work’s intensity and its challenges, Calypso says she was always driven by the reward of a successfully completed project. She also cites the respect of her colleagues, from the tradespeople she supervised to her supervisors and directors, as critical to her positive experience in the industry.

Becoming a Leader

Even after joining Hill, Calypso’s path has hardly been predictable. She started as a proposal writer in 2014, leveraging her academic background and hands-on understanding of construction to develop incisive, compelling arguments for why Hill should win new work. After her time on the proposals team, Calypso entered into the world of project controls. Since then, she has become a leader on the operations team in Greece.

“I continue to use everything I’ve learned in the various steps of my career,” says Calypso. “My proposals experience, for example, helps me better assess client needs and develop successful plans to address them, as well as understand why a certain client would want our expertise. Then, when overseeing our teams, I can help them balance their efforts in line with our clients’ priorities.”

Currently, Calypso leads a team of more than 65 colleagues, nearly half of whom are women, on the Ellinikon project. As a leader, she aims to motivate her colleagues through her own actions and hard work. “For everyone, but especially for the young women in the workplace, I try to serve as a strong role model, being professional in all situations, respecting the people I work with, and showing confidence in my abilities alongside a willingness to learn. I expect the same from all of my team.”

In this way, Calypso continues to expand her curriculum vitae, drive success on Hill’s projects, and show her colleagues that women can and should pursue their professional ambitions in construction. “I hope to continue supporting my colleagues and helping them, as others have helped me, build a career in this industry,” she concludes. “Whether a linear or a meandering path such as mine, young professionals should glean as much as possible from every opportunity along the way and look for mentors to help guide them. The construction industry is a dynamic one, full of potential for change and evolution, where every project, every day, brings new prospects and new opportunities. With this in mind, I am eager to take on the next challenges as I continue my trajectory within Hill, and I am confident in our continued success.”

Hill International, Inc. is proud to celebrate our fantastic employees during Women in Construction Week. We are dedicated to creating a supportive environment for all of our employees. To learn more about careers at Hill, please visit: www.hillintl.com/careers/.