Startup to Stewardship: How a family business was Built to Matter with Josephine Sukkar

Slow, disciplined growth and shared values can transform a startup born from crisis into a construction powerhouse, and the lessons apply far beyond the building site.

In this episode of From the Top with Chad Hesters, host Chad Hesters sits down with Josephine Sukkar AM, cofounder of Buildcorp and chair of the Buildcorp Foundation, alongside Allan Marks, managing partner of Boyden's Sydney office. Josephine shares the 36-year journey of building Buildcorp from an $80 million project in 1990 into a billion-dollar enterprise with over 600 employees, all while navigating the unique challenges of running a family business at scale, scaling across geographies, and translating lessons from the arts world into boardroom strategy.

What You'll Learn:

- How to embed crisis-driven values into organizational culture at scale. Josephine and her husband built Buildcorp with a founding principle born from necessity: never let employees experience the job loss and financial fear they faced in 1990. This single value became the north star for hiring, risk management, and decision-making across 600+ employees.

- The compound growth playbook: Why controlled 12.5% annual growth outperforms explosive expansion. Rather than chasing market share, Buildcorp set strict parameters around growth speed to ensure they could service clients properly, develop people, and maintain culture—a discipline that protected the business through the GFC and allowed geographic expansion to succeed on the second attempt.

- How to build "tight and loose" governance for family businesses with geographic spread. Josephine explains the counterintuitive strategy of being absolutely rigid on non-negotiables (safety, values, process adherence) while remaining flexible on execution—allowing Queensland, Victoria, and NSW teams to adapt to regional cultures without diluting brand identity.

- Why boards should build risk frameworks around big scary ideas, not kill them. Drawing from her experience with Opera Australia's floating opera on Sydney Harbour, Josephine learned that a director's role isn't to say "no" but to surround innovative concepts with appropriate safeguards, a mindset that separates entrepreneurial boards from risk-averse ones.

- The market value principle: Experience trumps titles when it comes to leadership worth. In tender interviews and client selection, buyers never ask about credentials or compensation—they ask how many projects of similar scale your team has delivered. This reframes how organizations should develop talent and how leaders should value their own journey.

- How to leverage board positions across industries to reshape organizational thinking. Josephine's move from construction to arts boards taught her that creative industries approach risk differently—and those lessons directly improved her private company's ability to innovate, making cross-industry board experience a hidden leadership multiplier.

- The case for structured, community-driven philanthropy: Turning corporate giving into measurable impact. By asking employees what causes matter to them, Buildcorp's foundation has distributed over $7 million AUD toward mental health and suicide prevention. With zero staff and near-zero operating costs, the model proves that scale and impact don't require overhead; they require clarity of purpose.

About the Guest(s)

Josephine Sukkar AM is Co-Founder and Executive Leader of Buildcorp, a construction powerhouse employing over 600 people with annual revenue exceeding $1 billion AUD. With a background in education and construction management, Josephine has spent 36 years building a family-owned business alongside her husband Tony, while simultaneously championing women in sports and industry as former Chair of the Australian Sports Commission and President of Australian Women's Rugby. Awarded Member of the Order of Australia in 2017 for her contributions to community, sports, and construction, she brings deep expertise in scaling family enterprises, risk management, board governance, and philanthropic impact through her leadership of the Buildcorp Foundation, which has distributed over $7 million AUD to mental health and suicide prevention initiatives. In this episode, Josephine shares transformative lessons on balancing controlled growth with entrepreneurial innovation, integrating family dynamics into large-scale business operations, and the critical role boards play in supporting calculated risk-taking—essential insights for C-suite leaders navigating family business succession and sustainable scaling.

Quotes

"We set ourselves up well, and it just shaped the way we've run and grown the business—we never want anyone who works for us to feel the way we felt that day." - Josephine Sukkar

"We'd set parameters around the business with a compound annual growth rate of around 12 and a half percent, and we've maintained that by being really careful to make sure the business doesn't grow bigger or quicker than we can actually service it." - Josephine Sukkar

"There's no flex in safety, no flex in values—these are things we're not prepared to flex on, and people are really clear on that." - Josephine Sukkar

"You need to be really clear on what you're tight on as a business, but then you need to be able to unleash entrepreneurial talent and give them the confidence to tell you what you need to hear and make scary decisions." - Josephine Sukkar

"The role of boards is to ensure that we help management and the executive teams build risk frameworks around big scary ideas, not to be the order partner who stops us from being entrepreneurial." - Josephine Sukkar

"Our market value is the sum of our experiences, not our titles—clients never ask me about titles or degrees, they only ever ask how many projects of this nature and scale we've delivered." - Josephine Sukkar

"To succeed in different markets, you need to allow people to work within and adapt to their own environments while being really clear on what you're tight on as a business." - Josephine Sukkar

"We don't have a choice anymore to sit back and say we don't think something is good—we need to be able to be adaptive, because those who are most adaptive to change are going to be the ones that survive." - Josephine Sukkar

"We've distributed over 7,000,000 Australian dollars through the foundation, and we run a pretty tight ship with no staff and operating costs that are pretty much zero." - Josephine Sukkar

"Our market worth doesn't come with a change in title—it comes with time in the saddle and what that experience is worth, so value the experiences you're achieving on the job today rather than trying to rush to the next title." - Josephine Sukkar

Episode Highlights:

[00:02:59] Transform Crisis Into Your North Star—Let Fear Shape Long-Term Culture, Not Just Short-Term Decisions – Josephine Sukkar reveals how her and Tony's founding crisis—joblessness, a pending birth, 18% interest rates—became the guiding principle for every hire and risk decision Buildcorp made for 36 years. For C-suite leaders in family businesses scaling to $1B+, this insight addresses the challenge of maintaining founder values as the organization grows beyond personal oversight. Rather than letting fear paralyze decision-making, Sukkar institutionalized it: "We never want anyone who works for us to feel the way we felt that day." The method is straightforward—identify the core emotional truth of your founding struggle, then embed it explicitly into hiring criteria, risk tolerance policies, and leadership messaging. At Buildcorp, this fear-driven principle ensured consistent 12.5% controlled growth, prevented over-leveraging during downturns, and created psychological safety across 600+ employees. For family business leaders, this transforms your origin story from inspiring narrative into a living operating system that protects culture during expansion.

[00:06:00] The "Tight and Flexible" Framework—Define Non-Negotiables, Then Grant Autonomy to Execute Differently Across Markets –Josephine demonstrates how to scale geographically without diluting culture by establishing which values are absolutely rigid (safety, integrity, process adherence) and which execution methods can flex based on regional subcultures. For mid-cap family business leaders expanding beyond a single location or state, this solves the painful tension between standardization and localization. The framework requires two steps: first, ruthlessly identify your 3–4 non-negotiable values that define the brand (Buildcorp chose safety and values as "no flex" zones), then transparently communicate what leaders *can* adapt (how Queensland's culture differs from New South Wales, requiring different relationship-building approaches). Sukkar's first Queensland expansion failed because they over-standardized; they returned with cultural humility and succeeded. This principle applies equally to public board dynamics: Coca-Cola doesn't flex its logo, but it flexes product formulation by region. For C-suite executives managing distributed teams, this framework prevents the false choice between "total consistency" and "chaos"—you can have both discipline and adaptation.

[00:11:00] Reframe Board Risk as Innovation Architecture, Not Risk Elimination—Build Frameworks Around Bold Ideas, Don't Kill Them –Through her Opera Australia pontoon experience, Josephine illustrates how boards should function as architects of smart risk-taking, not gatekeepers blocking unfamiliar ideas. Many C-suite leaders and board members default to asking "Where has this been done before?" rather than "How do we structure this so it could succeed?"—a mindset that stifles the experimentation family businesses and mid-cap firms need to compete. When the artistic director proposed floating an opera on Sydney Harbour, Sukkar's instinct was to list 100 catastrophic scenarios; instead of suppressing the idea, the chairman redirected her concerns into a risk-mitigation subcommittee. They assembled marine engineers, safety experts, and insurance specialists to architect the production responsibly. The result: a stunning, fully-executed performance that became a cultural asset. For board members and CEOs, the takeaway is to distinguish between "truly dangerous" risks and "unfamiliar" risks—the former require blocking, the latter require smart frameworks and expert input. This mindset shift directly impacts talent retention and innovation velocity, as executives see boards as enablers rather than obstacles.

[00:17:19] Structured Giving Amplifies Impact—Embed Employee Voice Into Philanthropy to Align Purpose With People – Rather than imposing a cause top-down, Josephine and Tony simply asked Buildcorp staff via email: "What causes should we support?" Mental health emerged organically because male construction workers faced a suicide crisis directly impacting their workforce. This employee-driven approach has since distributed $7M+ across prevention programs and crisis support, with zero overhead costs. For C-suite leaders in family businesses, this reveals how to align corporate purpose with authentic employee values—avoiding the performative "corporate social responsibility" trap that disengages teams. The method is transparent: ask your people what matters, let the answer surprise you, then structure giving (ideally through a public ancillary fund) to amplify both corporate and public donations. Sukkar's foundation now runs fundraising campaigns across 50+ job sites simultaneously, with dollar-matching participation that deepens emotional investment. For CEOs seeking to strengthen company culture while making measurable social impact, this demonstrates that the most powerful purpose initiatives emerge from listening to your people, not dictating from the executive suite.

[00:22:20] Market Value Is the Sum of Experience, Not Titles—Reframe Talent Development to Reward Time-in-Saddle Over Promotion Velocity – Josephine's most provocative insight: when tendering on major projects, clients never ask about titles, degrees, or salary bands—they only ask "How many projects of this scale and nature has your team delivered?" Yet most organizations structure careers around title inflation and rapid advancement, creating burnout and skill gaps. For C-suite leaders and HR professionals in mid-cap firms, this challenges the assumption that talented people want promotion; many want mastery, decision-making authority, and recognition for scar tissue accumulated through complex projects. The reframing requires two actions: first, decouple compensation and status from titles, instead rewarding depth of experience and project complexity; second, communicate this explicitly during recruitment and retention conversations—showing emerging leaders that "time in the saddle" is valued more than climbing the org chart. At Buildcorp, this principle meant keeping experienced project managers in high-impact roles rather than forcing them into supervisory positions. For talent-driven businesses, this directly reduces unwanted turnover (people stay in roles that grow them deeply) and improves client confidence (your team's track record matters more than their business cards). This insight is particularly valuable for family businesses competing against larger corporations for senior talent—you can offer meaningful depth and autonomy rather than just titles.

Episode Resources:

LinkedIn Profiles:

Josephine Sukkar: https://www.linkedin.com/in/josephine-sukkar-am-91843819
Chad Hesters: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chadhesters/

Websites:

Buildcorp Foundation: buildcalledfoundation.com.au
Lifeline Australia: 131114

Organizations:

Buildcorp: Construction company founded 1990
GrowthPoint Properties Australia: Listed property company
Solpads: Listed company (formerly Washington Hastings)
Australian Museum: Honorary board affiliation
Green Building Council of Australia: Honorary board affiliation
Australian Sports Commission: Former chair role
Australian Women's Rugby: Former president role
Opera Australia: Arts organization board affiliation