Kim Roy knew early in life that she wanted to build—not follow a conventional professional path or step into the careers held by her parents. While her mother worked at the Library of Congress and her father served as a police officer, Roy envisioned a future shaped by construction, architecture, and engineering.
“From a very early age, I said to my parents, ‘I want to move to New York City and I want to build skyscrapers,’” Roy recalls. “In high school, I took some drafting courses. I went to college at Virginia Tech and I studied building construction. And ultimately that led me to Hitt.”
That ambition eventually propelled Roy to the top of Hitt Contracting Inc., where she now serves as CEO and was recently named the Washington Business Journal’s 2025 CEO of the Year. A 26-year veteran of the company and CEO for the past eight years, Roy has overseen Hitt’s transformation from a firm known largely for interior buildouts into a national construction leader generating $8.66 billion in global revenue.
Roy began her career at Hitt in the company’s base building division, when the firm was far smaller and primarily focused on corporate and law firm interiors. Her first project was the Society for Human Resource Management headquarters in Alexandria, Virginia. For more than a decade, she worked primarily in the field, gaining hands-on experience while questioning how the company could evolve.
“Is there a way maybe we could do this differently?” Roy remembers asking. “Is there a way that we could innovate in that space?”
Her curiosity was met with opportunity. “And the owners of the company said, ‘Why don’t you come in and make the change that you’re talking about, small scale at first,’” she says. “Then every time I was wanting more runway, wanting to grow, do something different, I was always given that opportunity, so I never wanted to leave. I always wanted to stay a part of the Hitt family.”
Roy steadily climbed the leadership ladder—becoming vice president in 2009, senior vice president in 2012, executive vice president in 2015, and ultimately CEO. She became the first non-family member to lead the firm since its founding in 1937.
“That got me excited,” Roy says. “So then I started to dream a little bigger, and started to be a lot more vocal and a lot more confident in my leadership.”
Roy’s tenure has coincided with dramatic growth. Hitt’s revenue rose from $921.3 million in 2013 to $1.35 billion in 2016, surpassed $5 billion by 2022, and reached $8.66 billion in 2024, overtaking longtime regional rival Clark Group to become one of Greater Washington’s largest private companies.
Despite those milestones, Roy remains grounded.
“We come from humble roots,” she says. “But of course, we celebrate all of the milestones that come from growth, from other milestones of cool projects that we deliver, that we love to celebrate. There are wins in the building environment.”
A driving force behind Hitt’s expansion has been its focus on technically complex projects, particularly data centers, health care facilities, and mission-critical infrastructure. Roy traces the company’s data center expertise back to client trust and a willingness to adapt.
“We had several projects for a trusted interiors client, and they said, maybe you could build the data center in our building,” Roy says. “Some of that is how our roots got started in data center work that obviously then grew to much larger and complex projects, again, with that attention to detail on things that were more in our traditional construction toolbox, of quality of work.”
Roy is outspoken about pushing boundaries in an industry often seen as slow to change.
“I think status quo is pretty boring,” she says, repeating the sentiment several times.
She credits Hitt’s owners, Jim Millar and Brett Hitt, for giving her the freedom to experiment. “They would give me a lot of runway when I wanted to try something, and always felt like they were pushing me to stay curious, to be innovative and I love that,” Roy says.
That mindset led to initiatives like Co|Lab, Hitt’s research and development hub housed in a mass timber building in Falls Church. The company is now constructing a 270,000-square-foot headquarters, designed by Gensler, that will include R&D space, sustainability features, and a partnership with Virginia Tech’s Coalition for Smart Construction.
“I love to read and I love to stay curious, so I’m constantly learning,” Roy says. “I think I’d be crazy bored if I wasn’t constantly learning new things about our industry, but in general, in life, I love to continue to grow and learn.”
Beyond innovation and growth, Roy views mentorship as one of her most important responsibilities. Facing a persistent labor shortage, Hitt now runs an entry-level training and development program that supports roughly 200 participants at any given time.
Mentoring, Roy says, “is the favorite part of my job.”
“I think that there will always be people interested in the built environments, and I think the challenge is to attract them to our industry,” she says. “We’ve got to continue to evolve and innovate, to attract the kids that are looking at their iPads and thinking technology is cool. I want them to know that construction is cool.”
Even with the demands of leading one of the nation’s largest construction firms, Roy says her identity remains rooted in building.
“I drive around and I marvel at all the construction,” she says. “I’m agnostic on the builder. I love seeing beautiful construction.”
Originally reported by Michael Neibauer – Managing Editor, Washington Business Journal in BIZ Journals.
