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♪ ♪ The New Jersey Economic Development Authority.

[upbeat jazz music] ♪ ♪ - Welcome to "Pathway to Success."

I'm your host, John Harmon, founder, president, and CEO of the African American Chamber of Commerce of New Jersey.

Today's guest is Christopher A. Coke, practice leader, H2M Architects and Engineers.

Chris, welcome to "Pathway to Success."

- Thank you, John.

Thank you.

So, a pleasure to be here.

- So let's get right into it.

Let's start off with a little bit of your background.

Where you're from, family, big family, small family, and where were you educated?

Let's start right there.

- All right, well, New Jersey born and bred, I've been in New Jersey all my life.

I'm actually the child of two immigrants, two Jamaican immigrants, who came to the U.S. in the '60s.

I'm the youngest of five.

Born and raised in Paterson.

K through 12 educated in Paterson public schools.

And after finishing that, you know, finishing my high school at the mighty JFK Knights.

I later went to NJIT, Newark College of Engineering in Newark, and there, I majored in civil engineering, and graduated with a Bachelor of Science in civil engineering in 1999.

- So you kept it all local.

NJIT, you know, Paterson.

You know, Paterson has a long history, I'm thinking about Joe Clark, and he put the city of Paterson, to some degree, on the map when he was principle at one of the high schools there.

But why engineering?

- Well, I'll say, let me clear that up.

First, John, you know, East Side is a rival of our high school, JFK Knights, so the funny part if Joe Clark was the principle of East Side, which we've always had a rival with, but growing up in a town like that, you know, you had cousins that went to school on the other side of town, which made it a really cool experience growing up.

As far as engineering, I've always had a knack to wanna--to build things.

You know, I was the kid who got Christmas gifts and then would take them apart, you know, a month later to see how they work.

- So coming from Paterson into Newark NJIT, share with our viewers a little bit.

What was the environment like?

- One of the things that stood out was that I was in a community of other folks who had similar backgrounds.

Being able-- and when I say that, I mean more socio-economic than even color, that it was a working class city.

You know, both my parents worked hard.

They didn't have college degrees, yet they managed to provide a life where they were able to send, you know, all five of their children to college.

So that's an accomplishment in itself.

My generation, right?

This is basically the hip-hop generation, so a lot of us listened to the same music, liked the same TV shows, same clothing, and it was something new.

We were trying to be that first generation of folks from the hip-hop culture who went to college and were majoring in a lot of these STEM fields that, at the time, weren't necessarily popular for people of color.

- So I wanna go back to the household.

I think that's a major accomplishment.

Neither of your parents attended college, but nonetheless, you and your siblings all went to college.

Was, you know-- was education emphasized around the dinner table?

- What I would say is that their commitment to education was the reason that they came to the United States, was to give us a better opportunity.

Three of my siblings were born on the island of Jamaica, so I know it was important for them to get them into a space where they had the greatest chance to succeed, and that was, you know, obviously the United States.

- What was your first job?

- My first job out of school was-- I worked for a small firm called Purcell Associates.

I was working there while I was in school.

So if we wanna go way back, the first job was-- I think it was Champs Footwear.

[laughs] Champs Footwear while I was in school, taking a bus from the mall to school.

Taking the bus from Newark back to Paterson, it was challenging.

But my first job in the engineering field that I could say full-time was with a firm called HNTB.

Super big firm, top 20 in the nation, and I worked there for about seven years, really got my feet wet, and learned how to operate in this world.

- Yeah, so how diverse was that firm?

- At the time, you know, again, we mentioned earlier about the low number of folks of color in the STEM, engineering, science fields.

As a technical professional, you know, I was probably joined by another dozen-- dozen folks out of a office of 100 that were folks of color, so it was a challenge.

I was fortunate enough to have two great mentors, my hiring manager, Frank Scerbo, who I think has moved on from the firm, and our office manager, Tom Hicks, who were both very supportive of not just me being there and working in the engineering field, but being able to help me promote some diversity initiatives that I was already involved with and helping me further those diversity initiatives.

- The significance of their mentorship-- can you elaborate on that?

- I truly believe that one of the things that it showed me was that there were people who had cultural differences, but were very similar from a moral standpoint.

And I had the chance to just meet, you know, two really good men who I felt did everything they could to support me moving forward.

- As I looked over your career, you spend time in both the public and private sector.

So your next job upon leaving this particular one was where?

- I worked for a mid-sized construction firm called Railroad Construction Company, founded and based in Paterson.

Super dynamic president, Al Daloisio.

It was a family business, and he brought me on in design group.

So that was my next job, and what that did was allow me to combine the on-paper engineering drawings and things like that with on-field experience, to be able to talk to the men who are charged with building, you know, off of these plans and blueprints.

So that was a really cool experience.

- Two private sector jobs.

Your next move, public sector.

Why?

- The opportunity came.

Mayor Jeff Jones, shout out to Mayor Jeff Jones from Paterson, New Jersey.

I had been involved in some form in politics at the time.

I had sat on his zoning and planning boards, and I had the opportunity to work on the transition plan when Mayor Jones was elected the mayor of Paterson.

Through that experience, I chaired up the Public Works and Infrastructure Group, and upon presenting my report to the Mayor Elect at the time, he decided to bring me in for a interview and hired me as the Public Works and Engineering Director for the city of Paterson, which was a huge accomplishment and just so cool to be able to work in a leadership position in the same city that I was born and raised in.

- Contrast the public sector and the private sector.

- Instead of revenue-based, I was now basing on savings.

How much could I save the taxpayer?

The taxpayers become your constituents.

You're now answering to a board or a council with the mayor that leads the city.

So some similarities in that I treated them as if they were the clients now, but definitely a lot more people to serve when you're talking about a city of 150,000.

John, as you know, I went on to East Orange, and I took the same position as Director of Public Works and Engineering for the city of East Orange.

So working in both of those spaces really gave me an opportunity to see what matters to people.

It allowed me to bring value to not just the employees who worked on my team, but also to the citizens who were relying on our services.

- So being in two cities that were Paterson, heavily diverse, Orange, how does that make you feel as a Black man in a community that many of the citizens look like you?

- In those positions, what it allowed me to do was to take my personal accomplishments out of the equation and really focus on serving the people.

And that was really fulfilling.

Really fulfilling.

- So H2M is a pretty large firm.

How did you arrive there?

And tell our viewers a little bit about the organization.

- I knew that after going through COVID, that I was up for a new challenge.

I believed that I truly wanted to see, not only what I could do on the private side, but also to be able to implement a lot of the strategies that I developed working in Paterson and East Orange, and get a leadership role in a firm like H2M.

- So when was H2M established?

- H2M was founded in 1933 in Long Island.

H2M has a storied history of providing services for municipalities in Long Island.

It's a multi-disciplinary firm that provides engineering services to a whole host of markets.

- We're gonna transition to our first break here in a moment.

But if you can elaborate a little more on the types of services that H2M provides.

- So H2M provides planning, architectural, and engineering services.

In those categories, we service a broad range of markets.

Water and waste water services, that's our primary market that we serve.

- So we're gonna stop right here and take a quick break.

We'll be back in a moment.

announcer: We encourage you to visit our website at www.aaccnj.com, or call us at 609-571-1620.

We are your strategic partners for success.

- Welcome back to "Pathway to Success."

I'm your host, John Harmon, founder, president, and CEO of the African American Chamber of Commerce of New Jersey.

I wanna continue this conversation with today's guest, Mr. Christopher A. Coke, practice leader, H2M Architects and Engineers.

What's a typical day like for you?

- So on a typical day, you know, it'll start with a flurry of phone calls, seeing who needs what services, making sure that issues from the day before, a week before, are being addressed, preparing proposals.

What problems can we help you solve?

You know, being at H2M, we really have a concerted effort to provide value for our clients.

One of the things that's important for me is to help a lot of our clients solve problems early on.

Many municipalities--especially with our municipal clients, you find that money is limited, cash is limited, you're working on a tax base that may or may not be able to fund projects for future years.

And you really try to work on solutions that work within those budgets.

If we talk about some of my most fulfilling jobs, I would definitely say during my time in East Orange, I have an opportunity to also serve as the executive director for the East Orange Board of Water Commissioners, being able to get them through some through times.

The executive director who had held the position before me was actually indicted for falsifying records, and one of the things that we were able to do was to get back in compliance with the DEP and other state and regional regulators.

- Well, I think determining that value proposition is important in all walks of life, and you put a lot of emphasis on that today, and I think that speaks to you as a professional, and also speaks to the mission of the organization which you work for.

So, that said, does H2M have a DEI initiative?

- I can definitely say, John, that, you know, since the murder of George Floyd and that incident, it really helped H2M ramp up its D, E, and I initiatives.

It definitely helped us to be-- to be more aware of what's going on, and I credit our CEO Rich Humann and the rest of the leadership team within H2M for really taking the challenge of working to increase our staff with more diversity, but also being more focused on having the opportunity to work with diverse sub-consultants, which is really important.

- Well, you know, you talked earlier about value.

Value proposition, relationships.

It's well documented that through intentionality, D, E, and I initiatives impact the bottom line in meaningful and sustainable ways, so it's very encouraging to hear that your firm has embraced it.

Moreover, you're a member of the African American Chamber of Commerce, with a firm that is predominantly non-minority, so that says a lot right there, and we're working in strategic alignment with you to help you attain some of your mutual goals.

So that said, can you speak to any awards that you all may have received just for doing the great work that you do?

- Yeah, so, Long Island Business has named H2M a leader in architecture, engineering, and environmental consulting services over the past several years-- decades, even.

And in New Jersey, we've made the push embedding knowledge by New Jersey Biz as one of the best engineering, architectural, and environmental service firms providing services to the real estate and construction industry.

- You know, so we talked about value, we talked about relationships, and this whole aspect about corporate citizenship and responsibility back to the community.

Share with us some of the organizations that you are involved with as a representative of your firm, or just you've taken upon yourself to be more engaged in the community and professional organizations.

- I decided to be involved with organizations that specifically promoted STEM fields, so to that end, I was the treasurer for the National Society of Black Engineers.

And later on, I became the president of the Alumni Chapter for the National Society of Black Engineers.

Being involved with NSBE, we have a technical professionals group, and connecting them, as well as some undergrad students, with high schoolers, seventh and eighth grade students, being able to go and talk to them, one of the things we did was we brought curriculums to schools in Paterson and Jersey City about Black inventors.

I was also treasurer of the American Society of Civil Engineers for the state of New Jersey.

It was through my activity there that I was awarded Young Engineer of the Year for the state of New Jersey in the early 2000s, maybe 2002, 2003.

We did science fairs.

We celebrated Engineer's Week, which was held at Liberty Science Center, and we hosted, you know, over a thousand children and gave them hands-on demonstrations about engineering, how things work, exposing them to different careers, and it was all manned, you know, by young professionals, both from the American Society of Civil Engineering as well as my folks from the National Society of Black Engineers.

So it's really fulfilling, John.

I can't say that enough, how fulfilling it is to be able to show these children and show our young people opportunities that they just aren't exposed to.

- Are there other specific community initiatives that H2M is involved in, or you personally?

- As a firm, H2M has been very involved, and has been for a long time in Long Island.

We are bringing, now-- we have some groups that we work with in New Jersey like the interfaith group that provides services for low-income families throughout North Jersey.

But I've been able to connect them with different groups.

I connected them with a group in Paterson that's against gun violence, that's actively out there helping families of victims of gun violence get through their challenges.

So I'm happy to say that with H2M's storied history of being involved in supporting non-profits, that I'm able to add a little bit to that and expand our reach in providing services for our communities, which is so important to what we do at H2M.

- I think it's significant when a corporation could have a personality, have a face that the community can relate to.

I think it goes a long way in helping them be better corporate citizens through these interactions, so that's also encouraging.

An inspiration for you going in your professional pursuits or just life in general, is there a person--you have shouted out a lot of people during the course of this conversation, and I think that's important because, you know, there's people in your life that have made impacts.

There's people that you'll never forget, and it does them well to hear that they weren't forgotten.

- Absolutely, John, as you know, mentorship is needed-- not just in our community-- mentorship is needed in our country.

We have a lot of young people who don't have positive examples.

My list could go on forever, but obviously, like I said, Tom Hicks and Frank Scerbo, who gave me the opportunity to work with HNTB, being able to work at Railroad Construction, Al Daloisio and the leadership group there definitely showed me that you can be revenue-driven and still be a good corporate citizen.

Additionally, there were guys like Cary Hall, a money manager that, at the time, worked for UBS.

Robert Kumapley, a young engineer at the time, who helped me find my footing, who now is a decision maker at the Port Authority in New York and New Jersey.

Honestly, the list could go on and on.

The brothers at Paterson Inc., a non-profit group that I work with in Paterson.

We delivered food and essentials to families during Thanksgiving prior to COVID.

So I would say working with groups like that has really hit home for me and made sure that I stay grounded on my mission forward.

- I think that's fantastic.

You emphasized that you can do well and do good.

So we're almost done here today.

I'm having such a great time.

I want you to talk a little bit about the significance of H2M's relationship with the African American Chamber of Commerce of New Jersey.

- Well, John, as you know, we've started this relationship some months ago, and in 2022, we came on officially to work with the Chamber.

And I have to say that, already, I've seen just through the events that we've been invited to and involved with, that is something that's not only, again, personally fulfilling for me in being able to make that connection, but I'm also happy to see how our CEO, Rich Humann, and the leadership group at H2M has embraced that collaboration with the African American Chamber of Commerce.

- Well, I can tell you this.

We appreciate the relationship that we have with H2M and this leadership as well as you.

We're looking forward to doing great things together.

So, Mr. Christopher A. Coke, practice leader at H2M Architects and Engineers, we're just delighted that you've joined us today.

And to those that are viewing, until the next time, on your pathway to success, this is John Harmon, founder, president, and CEO of the African American Chamber of Commerce of New Jersey.

Thank you.

[upbeat jazz music] ♪ ♪ Equity, inclusion, diversity, collaboration, partnerships, unity.

There's a lot of terms that's being, you know, thrown around today in trying to get people together.

But at the end of the day, people just want to be respected and have equal access to resources, opportunities, and information.

New Jersey's home to over 9 million people.

Of that population is 1.2 million Blacks, and over 80,000 Black businesses.

I've said time and time again, Blacks are really on the liability side of the state's balance sheet, given the high unemployment, poverty, low medium income and net worth.

Recently, we had a long, drawn-out discussion about the cost of insurance, proxies such as credit scoring, education, and occupation used to determine auto insurance premiums in our state.

We think it doesn't make sense at all.

We're encouraged by the exchange and the engagement of state legislatures on this issue.

Even the governor's office.

I'm optimistic that we're gonna get a breakthrough in the not-so-distant future.

As the president and the founder and the CEO of the African American Chamber of Commerce, given the host of challenges that we engage in every day to get Black people in a better place, you have to be an optimist.

You can't be a pessimist.

You can't be disengaged.

And you can't not be intentional in the pursuit of equality and opportunity.

But at the end of the day, your Chamber, the African American Chamber of Commerce of New Jersey, is committed to your success.

You heard the interview today with H2M.

We have a host of corporations from all industries that are part of the African American Chamber of Commerce of New Jersey, and they've all come and aligned with the mission to help put Black people in a better place in New Jersey.

Again and again, we're your partner for success.

Thank you.

♪ ♪ announcer: Support for this program was provided by...

Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield of New Jersey.

PSE&G, JCP&L, Investors Bank, Berkeley College, NJM Insurance Group, The New Jersey Economic Development Authority.

♪ ♪