Elevatus Adds New Contract Construction Administrator Eric Young
Eric Young is one of those team guys.
If you’ve played sports, you know them. You know them if you were ever part of a group project in school.
You can count on them, because they’re always looking to lift up the team before they ever think about lifting themselves up. They trust in the game plan, and they don’t stop until the whole team has crossed the finish line. They find their purpose next to those who ride alongside them.
Eric’s a consummate teammate. Here’s an example: we asked the new Contract Construction Administrator at Elevatus what he’d do if he won the lottery.
“I’d put a team in place to help me be successful,” Eric says.
We pressed him a little bit. Most people say they’d travel or buy a house or a sports car, after all.
Eric doubled down on his answer.
“I would buy something, but I would put a team in place to help me make sure I’m making the right decisions for the present as well as the future.”
That includes, Eric explains, continuing his commitment to philanthropy, with a particular focus on the inner city that shaped his upbringing. Eric’s on mission to make positive changes, including fostering housing development, job creation, and youth education.
His team runs deep, and he looks out for them.
It should come as no surprise that Eric is such a team-first guy, though. He was a two-sport athlete and played college football, and today he’s got a side hustle as an actual NFL sports agent (more on that in a future blog post).
It can be hard to shake that team spirit after so many years as a teammate. Fortunately, Eric’s aware of the parallels between sports and business.
“Coming from sports, being a basketball and football guy myself, playing sports at a pretty high level, being able to come together as a team is beautiful,” Eric says. “When things are going bad, we may not agree on a game plan that Coach puts in place, but at the end of the day, that’s the game plan and we’re going to execute the game plan. That’s the beautiful thing about it – coming together as a team and getting great things accomplished. You’re going to have wins, you’re going to have losses, you’re going to have setbacks, but you gotta keep pushing through it.”
Eric was born and raised in Miami, Florida, in an inner-city neighborhood called Overton. He says Overton – a historic community with a rich African-American culture – is a big part of who he is, and it laid the foundation for the man he is today. After high school, Eric attended Harding University in Searcy, Arkansas, a private Christian college, where he studied Business Administration.
After college, Eric wasn’t quite ready to become a full-time sports agent, and he’d just proposed to his now-wife Ashley (whom he met on Christan Mingle) and wanted to start a family, so he took a stable opportunity in Orlando with Lennar Homes, one of the largest homebuilders in the U.S., where he had previously interned during high school.
That opportunity to learn the construction industry launched a career that would eventually move Eric into roles as a site superintendent and project manager before he’d make the move into the architecture industry.
“Just evolving,” he says about his career. “Always continuing to learn. I’m a person who doesn’t know it all so I’m always looking to learn new things and be around people who are open-minded and willing to share their knowledge. That’s a big thing about everywhere I’ve gone, to try to get information from those who know more than me about a particular subject or industry.”
As a Contract Construction Administrator, Eric will be the “go-between” between the Elevatus designers and the client. He’ll help our clients understand the construction process, and he’ll work in the field and on-site to make sure the designs are accurately constructed. He’ll be heavily involved in the ongoing Westville prison project, and work with the Elevatus Education team on various projects.
“Having that experience as a construction manager, residential and commercial, it helps me to communicate with those guys and be on the same level but also know what needs to be done,” Eric says. “I’m a really big proponent of seeking the answers and finding ways to get things done.”
What motivates Eric? You can probably guess.
“Being part of a team. I’m not a solo person. I want to contribute. I want to get a project done as a team and know that we got it accomplished. That’s what motivates me.”
We’re glad he’s on our team.
Outside of the office, Eric is part of a far more important team. He and his wife have three children, Lola (6), Capri (3), Rocko (1).
