Leading Culture from the Top: Zachry’s Culture Renovation® Journey - 2025 Next Practices Weekly

In this compelling edition of Next Practices Weekly, i4cp’s Tom Stone and Carrie Bevis sat down with David Zachry, CEO, and Jason Westenskow, CHRO of Zachry Construction Corporation, to explore how a 100-year-old, family-owned infrastructure company transformed its culture to fuel the next century of growth.

The conversation showcased how Zachry embraced a purpose-driven, data-informed approach to cultural transformation, aligning leadership, engaging employees, and sustaining momentum through structured action. With support from i4cp’s Culture Renovation® Advisory Services, they built a model grounded in trust, inclusion, and clarity—positioning culture as a business growth lever.

Key Topics Discussed

• From Legacy to Leadership: A CEO-Led Culture Transformation
  Zachry’s journey began with a bold call to action from CEO David Zachry, honor the past while creating a culture built for the next 100 years. This top-led commitment signaled to the entire organization that culture isn’t an HR initiative, t’s a business imperative.
• Insights-Driven Design: Listening at Scale to Shape Strategy
  Through a rigorous listening phase—including surveys, focus groups, and executive interviews, Zachry uncovered the mindsets and behaviors that mattered most. This data-informed foundation ensured alignment, trust, and a culture strategy rooted in real employee experience.
• The Zachry Way: Embedding Values that Inspire Action
  Three resonant values—Every Person Matters, Together We Can Do Great Things, and This is More Than a Job—became the cultural North Star. These weren’t aspirational slogans—they were co-created from the ground up and activated across roles and regions.
• Sustaining Momentum: From Playbook to Performance
  By identifying priority culture drivers and removing barriers, Zachry embedded culture into business rhythms. The result? Measurable change, elevated engagement, and recognition with i4cp’s 2025 Culture Renovation® Award.

Whether you’re leading change in a legacy enterprise or scaling culture in a fast-moving environment, this session delivered clear lessons on activating values, designing for impact, and leading from the top. Don’t miss this opportunity to hear directly from a CEO–CHRO team that redefined what's possible when culture is treated as strategy. Watch the full recording to see how The Zachry Way is building a culture ready for the next 100 years.

Resources Shared

• Is your organization truly remote-first? Find out what leading companies are doing differently—download the new joint i4cp-Akamai report, Remote First Organizations.
• Register for 2026 Conference -  i4cp's Next Practices Now Conference

To ensure open discussion, this event was exclusively for HR practitioners. Vendors and consultants were not permitted to attend.