I grew up in Mexico, raised by my grandmother with nothing. At eight years old, my mother came back, married to an alcoholic, abusive stepfather,  and told me I was going to Disneyland. I never went back to my grandmother. That loss shaped everything.

School was hard. Language was a barrier. Stability at home didn't exist. For a long time I existed on the fringes — never quite belonging, never quite settled.

Then, as a teenager, I found my uncle. And with him, I found paving.

In 1990, at 16, I went to work for my uncle's crew. I didn't have connections. I didn't have a plan. I just knew that when I was on a job site, I was exactly where I was supposed to be.

I spent the next decade learning every part of the trade from the ground up. Not only what a good paving job looked like, but more importantly the confidence I would build from learning discipline, resilience and an unwavering work ethic.

I moved to a much larger competitor and grew to VP of Operations. What helped me get there was something others had overlooked: I spoke both English and Spanish fluently. In an industry built largely by Hispanic workers, I could communicate authentically with the crews, and with the boardroom. I became equally respected in both worlds.

Then I decided it was time to build something of my own.

In 2006, I founded Eagle Paving. The first 18 months were extraordinary. Then the 2008 financial crisis hit.

For a young company built on ambition and sweat equity, it should have been the end. I leaned on my values, loyalty to my crew, integrity with my clients, grit when everything was working against me, and I steered Eagle Paving through. 

The years that followed brought steady growth. Then in 2015 adversity strikes again, this time personally. I lost my wife. My son was diagnosed with childhood cancer. I held it together — for my family, and for the many employees on my payroll who were counting on me. The company kept growing, because it was built on something real.

In 2020, Covid hit and I lost both my mother and stepfather to the virus. During this unprecedented time, I spotted an opportunity: national brands were pulling their advertising spend, leaving TV inventory deeply discounted while the country was home, watching. I ran Eagle Paving spots on television. We came out of 2020 with the strongest performance in our history.

Other founders started paying attention.

In 2021, the original founder of JB Bostick, without a doubt the benchmark of paving maintenance in Southern California since 1969, asked me to step in as CEO. He knew I was the right person to preserve what he'd built.

I first met Jim in the mid-nineties when I walked in requesting a $25,000 loan to cover payroll for a small company my uncle and I worked for, but didn't own. The owner had left me in charge for a week while dealing with a family emergency, and I needed to make it work. Jim and I met at a coffee shop, I explained the circumstances, and that morning he agreed to the loan on a paper napkin.

From that point on, he kept a quiet eye on me from afar. So when the time came to start Eagle Paving in 2006, he didn't hesitate to loan me $1 million... though this time, he had attorneys draft the contract.

I paid him back both times, exactly as promised. Having watched me persevere through many adversities over the years, Jim knew I was the right fit to continue his legacy.

A year later, a third founder came with the same ask. And I saw it clearly: there was a pattern here, and a real opportunity. I found myself with a renewed purpose; to help both the transitioning founders and their employees. 

Founders across the paving industry were approaching retirement with no succession plan, no buyer who understood their business, and no guarantee that the crews who'd given their careers to these companies would be looked after.

I founded the Pavemasters Family of Companies to be the answer. With the right equity partners, I could offer something the financial buyers couldn't, an operator who had been in the field, who respected the craft, and who genuinely cared about the people.

Today, the Pavemasters Family of Companies employs nearly 500 people across multiple companies. I still know most of them by name.