Cecilia Kucharski joins Kitchell in regional leadership role

Construction professional brings broad-based experience to Kitchell’s Southern California office

Industry veteran Cecilia Kucharski recently joined Kitchell Contractor’s Southern California office as a Regional Executive to oversee San Diego operations, bringing more than 23 years of experience in a wide range of markets.

“Finding executives with the depth and diversity of experience that Cecilia has is rare, and we feel very fortunate to have her join our team,” said Kitchell Southern California Region Vice President Mike Wolfe.

Kucharski’s background encompasses operations, preconstruction, strategic planning and business development. She has been involved with many projects in the public and private sector in the San Diego market, including large tenant improvement projects, major parking structures, healthcare, retail, student housing and office buildings.

Kitchell has a widespread impact in the San Diego market with divisions specializing in development, construction and construction/project management. The company’s local contracting portfolio includes project work for San Diego State University and UC San Diego. Kitchell built the 509,500-square-foot UC San Diego Jacobs Medical Center, for which it recently won an American Society of Healthcare Executives (ASHE) Vista Award for best new construction.

Prior to joining Kitchell, Kucharski was an executive with Balfour Beatty’s California region, overseeing preconstruction, estimating and design management staffs among five Southern California offices. She also served in a leadership position for Webcor Builders in San Francisco and San Diego, and was a project manager with DPR Construction. She obtained her degree in Construction Engineering and Management from Purdue University, where she continues to volunteer with the Purdue Women in Construction Mentoring Program.

Kucharski is a certified LEED® AP and DBIA Professional and serves on numerous boards including the ACE Mentor San Diego and Urban Land Institute San Diego/Tijuana, and was previously a board member with the Downtown San Diego Partnership. She was named one of San Diego’s Business Women of the Year by the San Diego Business Journal, and was honored by the YWCA “In the Company of Women” tribute with a Mentor Award.

There’s something to be said for those who ascend mountains for fun: gutsy. Those who do it to take a picture with a Kitchell logo’d banner: smart and gutsy.

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Bearing the Kitchell name (literally and figuratively), KCI Senior Project Engineer Wilson Leech and Project Manager Paul Jackson recently conquered the highest peak in Southern California, Mt. San Gorgonio. During their one-day hike they gained more than 11,000 feet and traversed 17-plus miles of steeply dipping thrust faults (if you don’t know what that means, ask them).

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“It was a tough hike, but the views from the top and exhausted satisfaction at the end made it all worth it,” said Paul.

Wilson explained the mountain as a massive block of quartz monzonite, which sits atop an ancient platform of Precambrian gneissic rocks, providing spectacular views.

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Wilson and Paul are working on a project together at SDSU (and are also apparently novice geologists), and collaborated on the following quote to commemorate their achievement, adapted from Thomas W. Higginson:

“Great men Kitchell Employee-Owners are rarely isolated mountain peaks; they are summits of ranges.”

Indeed we are.