ABOUT THIS EPISODE
Sixth-round pick. Oakland A’s. 1996. Nick Sosa made it as far as Double-A before baseball ended and he had to start over. Today, he’s a vice president with Kiewit Infrastructure, part of one of North America’s largest construction and engineering organizations — a company where employee ownership isn’t automatic. You earn the opportunity to buy in.
Chris Coghlan sits down with Nick to talk about the transition from professional baseball to heavy civil construction and what it takes to build a career inside a company whose roots go back to 1884.
From starting over as a rod man on a South Florida bascule bridge to helping deliver major infrastructure work at Orlando International Airport’s Terminal C, Nick explains why building the full tool belt matters more than rushing toward the next title.
He also gets into how Kiewit decides which jobs to pursue, how leaders know when someone is ready for more responsibility, what employee ownership actually means, and how to lead crews filled with people who may know far more about the work than you do.
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⏰ CHAPTERS
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0:00 Cold Open
1:04 Welcome Nick Sosa
1:17 Growing Up Around Heavy Civil Construction
4:23 Baseball, Sports & Getting Drafted by the A's
9:47 Pro Ball: From Best in Town to Mediocre
14:32 The Sound of a Different Level
15:20 Getting Released from Pro Baseball
19:30 The Pivot Into Construction
21:50 Starting at the Bottom: Rod Man to Builder
25:15 A Title Doesn't Make You the Boss
30:03 Finding Kiewit Through ENR Magazine
34:16 What Kiewit Actually Is
39:13 Employee Ownership & Skin in the Game
45:06 Kiewit's Origin, Omaha & Warren Buffett
47:04 Mission: Best, Not Biggest
49:23 Stewardship & Developing People
51:40 No End Goal: How the Opportunities Came
53:05 Coaching the Full Tool Belt
58:23 Big Company, Small-Contractor Feel
1:00:33 MCO & Building Terminal C
1:05:13 The People Who Built Nick
1:06:40 First Time You're "the Guy" & Managing Chaos
1:10:10 The Bad Job: The Army Corps Lesson
1:13:14 Health, Work-Life Balance & Performance
1:19:56 Doing Hard Things: Elk Hunting & Failure
1:24:47 Why Join Construction Now
1:27:23 What Construction Means to Him
1:28:20 Advice to the Next Generation
1:32:27 Training & Kiewit University
1:36:06 Gratitude & Close
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ABOUT THE GUEST
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Nick Sosa is a vice president at Kiewit Infrastructure, running the Southeast district — Baltimore to Mississippi and Florida, 300-plus staff. Drafted by the Oakland A's in the sixth round in 1996, he came out of pro baseball onto his father's bridge crews as a rod man. He joined Kiewit twenty years ago by answering an online job posting, has been a shareholder for over a decade, and helped build the company's Central Florida presence through Terminal C.
Website: https://www.kiewit.com
