People happen into careers in all sorts of ways, and often, even having a clear idea in mind is not enough to truly predict one’s trajectory. Leslie Davis, president and CEO of Harbor, an environmental consulting firm in Little Rock, discovered her interest in the industry after getting a job answering phones for another environmental consulting company. She found that she enjoyed the work and the people involved, so she decided she would become an environmental attorney. That turned out not to be the right fit either.
“I realized that being an attorney meant you sat in an office and read all the time; I really wanted to be able to get out in the field a little bit and do different things,” she said. “That’s the nice thing about this career. You do get to see lots of cool things. You get to go into industries across the state and see how things are made and really get to learn how diverse our manufacturing is here in the state.”
For her current role at Harbor, the firm she founded in 2007 with then-business-partner, Trena Adair, Davis oversees a busy company at the forefront of regulation, compliance and sustainability concerns for clients all over the state. Harbor works with industrial, commercial and government clients of all kinds, and the acquisition of Blaylock Threet Engineers in 2015 allowed the firm to offer even more design- and engineering-related solutions. As regulatory focus shifts to a more proactive approach centered on sustainability, Harbor’s sustainability group sets it apart as the firm of choice for businesses seeking to stay ahead of the rulemaking curve.
“We’re at that point with the regulations where what everyone is doing is voluntary,” Davis said. “We’ve had some [Securities and Exchange Commission] rules come out recently, but they’re not finalized yet, so really, consumer pressure is what’s causing companies to do these things — as well as investment pressure, being able to control some of the risks that are associated with climate change.”
Despite the company’s focus on finding compliance solutions that almost everyone can agree on, there are certain misconceptions about the firm’s work that can be hard to shake. That seems to come with the territory when words like “environmental regulation” are involved, no matter how positive the outcomes.
“My dad was a diesel mechanic, and I never could convince him that we weren’t [the Environmental Protection Agency], that we were not there to get you,” Davis said. “We are intended to be the link between the regulated industry and the regulator. We can come in and show you how to do things, how to fix the problem that you’ve got. No question is off limits with us. We have no regulatory authority. I can’t fine you anything, I can’t do anything like that. Our jobs are really like educators for those people. We have no ‘gotcha,’ no hammer.”
Despite the sometimes dizzying pace of the industry, there is one environment Davis is even more concerned about — the work environment. Watching her mother start her own company put the idea of business ownership in Davis’ head from a young age, and while she has worked for some “amazing companies,” she said, she had her own ideas about what a company could and should look like.
“I think watching my mom work hard and build her own business really gave me the confidence that I could do this,” she said. “I felt like the Lord was leading me in that way, and I knew that if he was going to entrust me with something like this, we had to do it right. We had to do it for the employees, not just for the clients.”
Davis is quick to point to the strength of her leadership team in explaining the company’s success. That collaborative, growth-minded work culture is something she and her colleagues try to pass on to the next group of Harbor executives, as well.
“We just have an amazing leadership team and project managers who are truly invested in the clients,” she said. “I really think that we’ve just been blessed beyond measure with real people who want to do well for their clients and do well for themselves. … It’s the reputation we have in the community, that we have from our employees, really, that if I get hit by a bus tomorrow, will be the things that I want folks to remember about this business.”
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