Influential Woman · Construction

Dawn Hayes

Retirement, Career break

Hurst, TX

Her Story

About Dawn

I spent 24 years with Archer Western, Walsh Group, a huge company based out of Chicago with thousands of employees. I started out as a project administrative assistant and held that position for about 18 years. Then I was promoted to regional office coordinator, which was essentially the same thing but with more responsibilities, including training other project admins. I transferred to a different division within the same company, moving from water treatment plants to healthcare. After 3 years in the healthcare division, I transferred to the building group and was promoted to regional HR manager. A lot of the responsibilities of an HR manager or generalist coincided with what I had done prior as a project admin, so it was just more responsibility and obviously a promotion. I retired on December 12th of last year as an HR manager. Throughout my career, I worked with Blue Cross and Blue Shield, which was a wonderful plan, and the company had very community-oriented values, especially when we were building medical centers and had to be part of the community.

Her Interview

Ten minutes with Dawn

01What values are most important to you in your work and personal life?

Family is number one on my list. I know that all the years I worked for Archer Western, I spent an awful lot of time working - I've been working since I was young. As I got older, I realized that I had lost time that I could have spent with family, and I regretted that. My kids would say, you're a workaholic, you're always working, even when you're at home, you're working. So I started making more time for family and less time worrying about work. Community is also very important to me. I've moved around quite a bit, and I've always tried to be part of the community wherever I was at the time. Even when I was working in New York on a temporary situation that was only supposed to be 8 months but turned into 13 months, I still tried to be a part of the community. The company I worked with also had very community-oriented values, especially because we were building a medical center - you've got to be a part of the community.

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