Women in Construction Week Spotlight: Agueda Zarate, Sr. Executive Assistant

In honor of WiC Week, we’re spotlighting five outstanding women selected by the Women of Webcor (our employee resource group for women, open to ALL Webcorians) leadership committee who have made exceptional contributions to Webcor while embodying our core values.

Her natural style of communication feels tailor-made for construction: direct and to the point. No meaningless pleasantries; no dancing around awkward topics.

In our industry, this type of unapologetic (yet respectful) straight talk is not only expected, but applauded—especially when coming from men leading field teams. But for women in administrative roles, the expectations have never been quite the same.

“My intent is always to be efficient and clear, so I’m very direct but never ill-willed,” Agueda says. “It can be jarring to those who don’t know me and assume I’ll be more feminine or softer in my delivery simply because of my gender and/or role.”

Jarring or not, Agueda’s too busy to beat around the bush. Don’t let her senior executive assistant (EA) title fool you—her responsibilities extend far beyond managing executives’ calendars and coordinating travel arrangements.

• Over the last eight years, Agueda’s been part-EA, part-company photographer, part-project manager, and part-corporate event planner for our SoCal team—to name a few. Whether she’s notarizing a document or helping Webcor requalify for LBE certification in LA, you can assume she’s juggling several time-sensitive initiatives any given week.  

“If people don’t know me personally, it’s easy for them to undermine my impact at Webcor,” she says. “I may be sitting at the front desk answering the phone with one hand, but that doesn’t mean I’m not negotiating a vendor contract to keep our overhead costs down with the other.”

Getting Started in Construction

Like many in our industry, Agueda was exposed to construction at a young age. After she and her family moved to the U.S., her parents learned English while taking on odd jobs—one of which was painting.  

When she turned 16, she joined her dad at the painting subcontractor he’d been working for, where she primarily entered invoices and estimates. They continued working there together every summer until she left for college, and her dad went on to start his own company painting residential homes.

• After graduating from Virginia Commonwealth University, Agueda packed up her car, drove to Los Angeles, and found a job at another painting company through her craigslist roommate (“yes, I’m craigslist old”), where she remained until the company closed over a decade later.

As she began her job search, her partner at the time (an architect) encouraged her to consider the general contractor side. After Googling LA’s top contractors, she learned Webcor was in the top five—and happened to be looking for a project accountant. She knew she had to apply.

After a couple weeks of silence, she assumed the opportunity wasn’t meant to be. At the same time, she was working with a recruiting company to support her job search—and the first interview they secured her was for a temporary front desk position at Webcor’s LA office.

• “I remember saying to the recruiter, ‘Webcor! I’m going to get this job!’” she says. “I interviewed, was offered the temporary position on the spot, became a permanent employee three months later, and the rest is herstory!”
  

From the start, Agueda was determined to make herself indispensable. Her responsibilities quickly evolved from basic front desk tasks to office management and executive support (while still maintaining the front desk), culminating in her recent promotion to senior EA in LA Operations and office manager of our LA corporate office.  

Being a strategic partner to executives remains her top priority—proactively identifying needs, creating structure, and always staying one step ahead.

• “I strategize closely with our amazing internal EA team to make our work look seamless,” she says. “I’m also part of external EA communities and am invested in my own growth because I’m always looking to improve in this ever-changing career path.”

Tackling Challenges & Building New Skills

Claiming to “wear many hats” can feel cliché—but if anyone’s earned the right to say it, it’s Agueda.

“Every day brings a new adventure,” she says. “I could be coordinating a volunteer event one day, building out an office another, taking photos at one of our jobsites the next, and running financial reports, all while plotting calendars and travel logistics for different team members.”

In 2023, Agueda took on the toughest project of her career: managing the completion of our downtown LA (DTLA) office build-out and move into the new space. She had her work cut out for her—she had no formal project management training or experience moving into an office of that size, and the LA office’s former general manager and design manager had just left Webcor, so minimal support was available.

• Fortunately, Agueda’s never been one to back down from a challenge. “It took a lot of effort, dust, document control, disagreements with ownership, and relocating into a temporary space, but in the end, I saved us nearly half-a-million dollars, ” she says. “We got the best contract DTLA has ever seen for an office space, and we have a beautiful space where we can bring all our people together and host industry events.”

From the start, Agueda envisioned an office that fostered a real sense of community—her favorite Webcor core value (did we mention she’s also been Webcor LA’s unofficial volunteer event planner for the last eight years?). She pictured an inclusive space that welcomed not only Webcorians, but our summer interns and local high school students from our community partnership programs like ACE Mentor Program and DTLA’s Ketchum YMCA.

“We want to bring in young talent and make Webcor a fun, challenging, great place to work,” she says. “I really enjoy seeing their growth and being part of their journey with us.”

No one’s growth has filled her with quite as much pride as Ricardo Rosales'. In 2022, Agueda interviewed Ricardo and decided to offer him an internship at the front desk—an opportunity to demonstrate his work ethic and strategic thinking skills, just as she had four years earlier.

• He jumped on the role while radiating positivity and enthusiasm, eventually working his way up to a permanent position as a project engineer (PE) in 2024. “Seeing our younger staff’s careers take off is incredibly fulfilling,” Agueda says. “I loved watching Ricky use the front desk role as a stepping stone and grow into the amazing PE he is today!”

Reflecting on the trajectory her own career has taken, Agueda’s realized she truly can accomplish anything she sets her mind to. Every time she’s doubted herself, she’s delivered—thanks in no small part to her well-honed problem-solving skills, proactive mindset, and general self-sufficiency.

“There have been so many moments when I really did not think I’d be able to pull off some of the challenges assigned to me,” she says. “Thankfully, our leadership has always given me the trust and autonomy to figure it out.  

• “One I always recall is being tasked with selling a property even though I’d never bought or sold a property before. CFO/CAO/Sr. EVP Matt Reece looked at me and said, ‘You are smart, and you are going to figure it out. I trust you,’ then put the documents on my desk. I must have spent days reading through hundreds of pages of documents and looking things up. Every time I doubt myself, I think of that moment… and just tell myself to figure it out!”

What’s Next?

Over the last eight years, Agueda’s balanced her EA workload with venturing into Marketing and Project Accounting and managing a TI buildout—valuable opportunities that exposed her to entirely new worlds within Webcor.

However, nothing has brought her greater satisfaction or benefited more from her exceptional organizational skills and razor-sharp attention to detail than EA work. “I can say with certainty that I’ll always be in or around the EA role,” she says.

Unsurprisingly, she’s already on top of her next move—experimenting with AI to automate more routine processes and exploring ways she can support other critical business functions.

• One initiative she’s particularly excited to immerse herself in is event planning. Over the next three months, she’ll be spearheading four events at our LA office with Associated General Contractors, Urban Land Institute, local small business contractors, Central City Association of Los Angeles, and Los Angeles Dept. of Water & Power. “I’m excited to help showcase Webcor to our partners, current clients, and hopefully future clients!”

Juggling such a wide variety of responsibilities with so many groups/people could easily overwhelm some—but not Agueda. If she’s learned anything about herself over the last few years, it’s that she thrives in the chaos of EA life: tight deadlines, unexpected challenges, and competing priorities.  

“Change is our only true constant,” she says. “In construction, at Webcor, and in life, you just have to roll with it!”