July 31, 2026
They Came as Interns
What it looks like when a firm keeps investing in its people long after the summer ends.
Adam Bier turned down a national contractor. Jon Loos turned down a move to Denver. Ava Hipskind left for Texas and came back. Sydney Goldsmith found this internship on Indeed with no idea what AEC stood for. Norah Gum and Sara Rogers are still deciding what’s next. Different starting points, different reasons for staying. Underneath all of it is the same thing: somebody at H&S decided their growth was worth the investment, and kept showing up.
Real Work, Not a Waiting Room
Adam Bier’s internship in Construction Services almost didn’t happen. His original internship, with a homebuilder, got canceled when COVID hit. A Southeast Missouri State construction management grad, he landed at H&S through a family connection, expecting coffee runs and paperwork. His first week, he was on a job site.
Sydney Goldsmith found her Marketing internship posting on Indeed in January 2025, a junior at the University of Arkansas with no idea what AEC stood for. Her first day was an eight-hour orientation, business unit leaders cycling through, interns learning what the firm actually does. She went home and looked up every acronym she’d heard. By the time she left, she was writing proposals and content the whole company reads every month.
Norah Gum had two internships before H&S. Both were fine. Neither one put her in the work the way this one has. She showed up, did tasks, and left without understanding what she’d built. This one in Horner & Shifrin’s Structural group was different.
“I didn’t expect to actually learn the trade,” she said. “I expected to watch.”
Sara Rogers got the same treatment on the MCT Trail bridge inspection this summer as a Structural intern: field work, documentation, calculations, final report, start to finish. She’d built a model bridge in a college class. This summer she inspected a real one. Between them, she and Norah have touched 141 bridges this summer.
Mentors Who Stick Around
Sloan Smith, Regional Manager of Construction Services, put Adam in situations that stretched him that first summer. One night on an I-170 job, Sloan came out and sat with him for half the night. He didn’t have to. He just did. Adam’s doing the same now for Lillian Kitchell, who’s coming up behind him.
“You almost want the people under you to succeed more than you are,” Adam said. “Because if they’re succeeding more than you, then you’re doing your job.”
Matt Fletcher knows this, having come from the H&S internship program himself, and did something similar for Norah and Sara, walking over to Sara’s desk one night to explain Live Load Distribution Factors, not just the how but the why. Their supervisor, Marty Chorkey, put it simply: “Sara and Norah have been valuable members of the H&S team during this summer’s internship, and their contributions have helped us meet an important project deadline. Mentorship has been one of the most satisfying aspects of my job at this stage of my career.”
When Ava Hipskind left for a job in Texas after her 2021 internship cycle, April Giesmann stayed in touch for three years. Not the firm. Not HR. April, personally. When Ava was ready to come back, H&S was still there.
“It makes me feel personally invested,” Ava said. “Like what I do here actually matters to the outcome.”
“The firm’s investment in you as a person, not just as a worker, is what makes you want to stay,” April said.
They All Had Somewhere Else to Go
Adam had an offer from a national general contractor. He turned it down. He’s been at H&S five years now, and clients call the office asking for him by name.
“I can be rich and sad, or I can be… not even poor, I’m paid well,” Adam said with humor, “and happy. And I chose to be happy.”
Jon Loos came to H&S in 2011 from the University of Missouri–Columbia. Another firm, with an office in Denver, was recruiting him hard. He chose H&S instead, and not for the projects. For the people: John Klein, the softball team, happy hours where he kept running into the same faces. Fourteen years in, Jon is a Regional Manager for the Transportation group with three PE licenses and an MBA, and he’s mentoring Jervis Atagana and Jansen Stark in Transportation. The chain John Klein started with him is still running.
Ava was H&S’s first rotating intern, summer 2021, two weeks each in survey, transportation, construction, civil site, structural. When it ended, she had two offers and picked a consulting firm in Texas. Not because H&S wasn’t right. She wanted to see somewhere else first. She’s back now, a Design Engineer in Civil/Site. Five years later, Clara Velloff is doing the same rotation, and Ava checks in with her.
Sara Rogers had been chasing an H&S internship since her freshman year career fair; her high school friend’s dad used to build model bridges at the kitchen table, and she figured if someone loved the work that much, the company had to be doing something right. Last year H&S offered her a water internship. She turned it down. This year she’s in structures, working on-site with Tom Lohman and Utkarsh Kode on the MCT Trail, a project whose findings fed a real maintenance plan and made it into an H&S article and a LinkedIn video with her name on it.
What Ownership Actually Buys You
“I’ve seen my ESOP balance grow to the equivalent of 12 years of 401k savings,” Jon said. “That’s not a tagline. That’s real.”
When Sydney graduated, H&S offered her a full-time role as Pursuit Coordinator, a job that she felt grateful for when she accepted. “What you give to H&S, you will get back,” she said.
“Watching Sydney grow from a marketing intern and seamlessly transition into a full-time pursuit coordinator has been incredible,” said Jen Schaffer, Pursuit Manager. “She has proven to be a great asset to the growth of our team.”
What This Actually Looks Like
Ramin trained Dave Riechmann and John Klein. John Klein trained Jon Loos. Jon trained Jervis Atagana and Jansen Stark. Sloan saw something in Adam before Adam saw it in himself. April Giesmann kept calling Ava for three years. Marty Chorkey made sure Norah and Sara understood not just what to do, but why it mattered. Joey Sminchak came in every Monday so Sydney wouldn’t be the only one from the marketing team in the office. None of that is in anyone’s job description. It’s just how the firm runs. Every person had another option, and picked this one.
You can see it in the work: a Construction Administrator whose clients ask for him by name, a Regional Manager who owns part of the company he works for, a Pursuit Coordinator who stayed late on her last day as an intern to finish a proposal that wasn’t even hers. You can see it in the numbers too. H&S has been around for 93 years. This summer’s intern class has 11 people in it, and a meaningful share of them will still be here in five years, in ten, in fourteen, because someone invested in them first.
“Our internship program is designed to provide students with meaningful, hands-on experiences while helping them build connections across the organization that will last throughout their careers,” said Cindy Baumann, Human Resources. “The greatest reward is seeing interns grow professionally, stay connected to our organization, and ultimately choose to return as future colleagues.”
Wesley Horner and Hymen Shifrin founded this firm in 1933 with the belief that the people doing the work should own it. These people are what that looks like in practice.
