Hope Voigt named president/COO of De Pere-headquartered Tweet Garot

Heather Graves

Staff

February 24, 2025

DE PERE – Hope Voigt said when most people think of construction companies, they don’t typically think about them having a woman president – let alone a woman president with no trade knowledge.

“I’m kind of a unicorn,” she said. 

Voigt – who started with Tweet Garot in 2008 in the finance department before moving into the chief operating officer (COO) role – was recently promoted to an expanded position of president and COO.

“I’m super proud of what my team has accomplished, which really has allowed me to expand my role,” she said. “If they weren’t ready, this wouldn’t be happening. But they’re certainly ready to take on additional challenges, and that’s allowing me to expand my role.”

An unconventional path

Voigt, a native of Chilton and a University of Wisconsin-Green Bay graduate, said she began her professional career as an accountant.

“I went to college for accounting and business management,” she said. “When I graduated college, I got my CPA, and I worked for a regional accounting firm, Baker Tilly.”

Voigt said it was the work she did with businesses throughout the region through Baker Tilly that first introduced her to Tweet Garot.

“I was working on the financials for Tweet Garot,” she said. “I knew the people at the company, and really thought it was a neat organization. The lovely thing about being a public accountant is you get to go into lots of different businesses – usually, it’s annually – and you get to learn about their business and really kind of what makes them tick.”

Through her work with Tweet Garot in her capacity as a CPA, Voigt said she was always impressed with the company’s story – now in its fourth generation of family ownership.

“They had this great success story, and they were still family owned – just a really neat place,” she said. “I could also tell that they aligned with my personal values, which is a fun thing – to be able to go work somewhere, where the company’s values are your personal values.”

Voigt said she joined the De Pere-headquartered construction company in the peak of booming business, quickly followed by the worst years of the industry.

“2008 was the best year in construction, like ever, and then 2009 came around and the world was falling apart in construction,” she said. “There were massive layoffs, people weren’t working full weeks – it was a challenging first couple of years. I was kind of witnessing almost the downsizing of construction.”

Though filled with hurdles, Voigt said she quickly immersed herself into the industry – strictly on the financial side of things at first – during her first few years at Tweet Garot.

“I spent a lot of time inside payroll, and I got to do a lot of special projects,” she said.

A handful of years in, Voigt said the president at the time identified that many of the company’s project managers didn’t have as good of a financial understanding of their jobs as they would like.

“He said, ‘Hey, I really could use your help in helping our project managers understand their job financials, and, oh, by the way, the project managers can kind of teach you about how projects work,’” she said.

As someone who enjoys learning new things, Voigt said this was “super exciting.”

“We basically exchanged knowledge,” she said. “I found a passion for finding out ‘how do I make running construction projects easier, and how do I help our project managers forecast jobs better and how do I make the whole project management process work better?’ It was a cool experience, and it drove my passion for the operations side of the business.”

Moving up the ranks

After successfully making the transition from the accounting department to supporting project managers, Voigt said she moved into an operations role where she oversaw a handful of support teams.

“I was also responsible for the projection of job performance,” she said. “I ran a couple of support departments and then supported our project teams in identifying financial performance of all their projects.”

In 2015, Voigt said she was promoted to the COO position.

“Our fourth-generation owner – Chris Howald – has been back in the business for a few years, and he wanted to develop an executive team to run the day-to-day business,” she said. “He charged me with leading that team.”

Because Tweet Garot is “pretty diverse,” Voigt said “a lot of exchange of resources has to happen” across all the company’s operational units.

“That was something I like to pride myself on – doing a good job of exchanging that information and creating a team,” she said.

An expanded role

The “significant growth” Tweet Garot has seen in the last five years – “we’ve had four acquisitions in the last five years” – Voigt said, has changed the function of the business.

“We are becoming bigger,” she said. “Resources – there’s more of them, but there’s more of a need to share. There’s central support functions, there’s things done at a regional level and then there’s all of the change management that comes with that.”

Voigt said as the business has become more complex, “the need for my role to step up a little and work at a higher level” was warranted.

“We have a great executive team, and they’re ready to take on more of the day-to-day operations,” she said. 

The growth leadership foresees for the future of Tweet Garot, Voigt said, made her promotion to the expanded role of president/COO “a natural opportunity.”

“In order for that to happen, I need to be in a slightly different role,” she said. “Our executive team will also assume additional responsibilities to fill that gap.”

Though she is assuming the role of president and taking on additional responsibilities, Voigt said she will also remain COO and coordinate many of her previous duties as well.

“I would say my role (as COO) has always been strategic in nature, but I would say I think my expanded role is focused more on the bigger picture,” she said. “I’ll be more engaged in longer-term, strategic (thinking) rather than having a quarterly focus.”

An area Voigt said she plans to continue to expand is leadership development.

“We have been doing an awesome job of really executing on a leader development strategy,” she said. “We have put some awesome tools in place inside our organization to help develop the next generation of leaders, like leadership training for our apprentices – we call them future foremen.”

Investments like career path mapping, identifying potential future leaders, putting them through additional training and helping facilitate development through focused goals, Voigt said, “don’t normally happen in a construction business.”

“Because as we grow, we need additional leaders to kind of step in and growth roles,” she said. “So we’ve done a really good job of leadership development.”

Voigt said one of the things she plans to “focus more time and energy on” as part of her expanded role is connecting the company’s information systems and driving continuous learning.

“Things in construction are super fragmented,” she said. “It’s almost like it’s designed to be fragmented – because you are on a project and that project is going to end, and you’re going to start a new project, and then that project’s going to end, and then you’re going to start a new project. So, it’s hard to create systems across individual projects.”

Voigt said Tweet Garot is doing what it can to be unique in the way it gathers data “in a way that will exchange information and help feed the future based on our historical learning.”

“I want to spend more time there – figuring out what that looks like for us and setting up how we get there in two to three years,” she said. “We started on it, but taking a step up in my role will allow me to spend more time investing in the continuous learning and continuous improvement path by using information in our current day-to-day environment – while continuing the leadership development path.”

Family focused atmosphere, culture

Voigt said one of the things she loves about working for Tweet Garot is its consistent family owned history.

“Not many people can say they work for a fourth-generation family owned business,” she said. “On top of remaining a family owned business that has grown as much as we have – it has retained a family atmosphere and a really unique culture, which is really kind of cool.”

Voigt said one of the things she is challenging herself with in the capacity of her expanded role is making sure Tweet Garot doesn’t lose that.

“As we continue to grow – because growth is in our future – how do we continue to bring people on and adapt them to this family atmosphere and this culture that we want to keep vibrant, even as we grow?” she said. “And then also providing opportunities for them to continue to lead in that same really vibrant culture is really kind of my calling.”

Voigt said “I’m super honored” to be a part of Tweet Garot’s growth over the past decade-plus and at the forefront of its anticipated growth in the future.

She said she also hopes she serves as a role model for others thinking of starting a career in construction.

“I want to be an example for people considering a career in construction,” she said. “Some people think that those who work in construction – that’s for people who can’t get into college – and that’s not true. It’s a really neat industry. There’s a ton of opportunities. So, I want to be a good example for people who are considering making a career.”

Howald, who serves as chief executive officer of Tweet Garot, said Voigt has been instrumental in driving operational excellence and strategic growth throughout her tenure with the company and he sees only more of that in her expanded role.

“Hope possesses a rare combination of strategic insight and exceptional leadership abilities that sets her apart,” he said. “Her unique talent for bringing people together, aligning culture and executing complex strategies has been transformative for our company.”

During his entire career, Howald said he’s never worked with a leader who better understands how to unite teams while maintaining a clear focus on strategic objectives.

“I am thrilled to co-lead Tweet Garot with Hope as we enter this exciting new chapter in our company’s growth,” he said.