Women Building Columbus: What We’ve Learned From the Women We’ve Built With

Construction is ultimately about people. The people who are starting businesses, growing organizations, leading teams, taking risks, and deciding that an idea is ready to become a real place.

Over the years, Compton Construction has had the opportunity to build alongside women doing this and more across Columbus. Women have been clients, business partners, mentors, and members of our own team.

Those relationships have influenced more than our project list. They’ve helped shape how we think about what a good construction partnership should feel like.

Lesson 1: Listen Before You Assume

CEO Blake Compton was named to Aspire’s Smartest Men in the Room class in 2026. The recognition led him to reflect on the women who had influenced his leadership, from early mentors and clients to business partners and members of the Compton team.

One idea kept coming back: listening.

“Making people feel safe and heard,” Blake said while talking about what matters when women enter construction conversations.

That sounds simple, but it asks something important of a construction team. We bring years of experience with buildings, budgets, site conditions, trade partners, schedules, and the decisions required to get a project built. That expertise matters.

But it doesn’t mean we already understand everything that matters to the person sitting across the table.

Good projects start by finding out what matters.

Lesson 2: The Business Owner Is Already an Expert

The woman building her first commercial space might not know everything about construction, but she’s the most knowledgeable person in the room about the business going into it.

She knows her customers. She knows what her team needs to do every day. She knows where the business is headed, what the experience should feel like, and which details will matter long after construction is finished.

What she may not know yet is construction, and that’s okay.

A good construction partnership brings two kinds of expertise together. The owner understands the business she is building. The construction team understands how to turn the needs of that business into a space that works.

This becomes especially important for first-time business owners. A commercial project can introduce an unfamiliar collection of decisions around the lease, financing, design, equipment, approvals, budget, and construction itself.

Our role is to make the construction part more understandable, ask the questions that need to be asked, and help the owner keep her attention on the business she is working so hard to build.

Lesson 3: Who Is in the Room Matters

Blake often comes back to the importance of noticing who is part of the conversation and whose perspective may be missing.

“When you’re in the room, look around. Does everyone look like you?”

What happens when everyone involved in a decision brings the same perspective? We understand how different experiences can lead to better questions, which can lead to unique solutions.

Different experiences lead people to notice different things. They change the questions that get raised, the assumptions that get challenged, and sometimes the details that make a space work better.

Women hold several leadership and planning roles inside Compton today. Cheryl Martin serves as Director of Accounting. Megan Williams is our Director of Preconstruction, and Carissa Martin is a Preconstruction Manager.

Megan and Carissa are involved in the part of construction where many of the earliest questions take shape. Preconstruction is where clients begin working through feasibility, scope, budget, existing conditions, and what needs to happen before work begins.

For a woman considering a commercial project, that also means the planning conversation at Compton includes women helping shape how projects move forward.

Representation alone doesn’t make a project better. Listening to the perspectives represented in the room can.

Lesson 4: The People You Work With Should Change How You Work

In 2012, one of our projects was a tenant improvement for the Women’s Fund of Central Ohio. Through that work, Blake built a relationship with then CEO Nichole Dunn that extended well beyond the construction itself, with Dunn becoming an important mentor during the early years of Compton.

The best business relationships aren’t always one-directional.

A contractor brings expertise to a client, but that doesn’t mean the contractor leaves the relationship unchanged. Clients teach us things. Partners challenge how we think. People with experiences different from our own point out blind spots. Over time, those lessons should influence how a company works.

We believe in relationship-first construction. Part of what that means to us is being willing to learn from the people we build with.

Lesson 5: Better Questions Lead to Better Spaces

Listening becomes especially meaningful when it changes something physical.

Blake points to an early Land-Grant Brewing project as an example. During conversations about the women’s restroom, practical questions came up about how women would actually move through and use the space. Blake credits what he had learned from listening to women with helping him recognize considerations that might otherwise have been missed.

Make a habit of asking who will actually use a space and whether the people making decisions understand their experience.

Someone needs to ask how customers will move through a room. How employees will work behind a counter. Where people will put their belongings. Whether a layout that makes sense on paper still makes sense when the space is busy.

Good construction requires technical expertise. A good space also requires paying attention to the people who will live with all those decisions once the construction team leaves.

Lesson 6: More Women Are Building What Comes Next

Compton has had the opportunity to work on women-owned or women-centered projects including Rose Dough Donuts, The Wag, The Tox, and Tremble.

Those projects represent different industries, audiences, and business models, but they share something important: each one started with an owner or operator who needed a construction partner to understand the business behind the space.

This is the standard we want to meet.

If you’re a woman who owns a business or franchise and you’re preparing to open your first location, remodel an existing space, or plan your next phase of growth with an expansion, your construction team should make the process easier to understand and give your priorities real weight.

You should be able to ask questions without hesitation. You should know what is happening and why. You should feel confident that the people building your space are listening to how your business actually works.

At Compton Construction, this is what relationship-first construction looks like.

If you’re planning a build, remodel, or expansion in Columbus or Central Ohio, we’d be glad to talk through what you’re building and what you need from the space.