I first met Jalen Hayes while recording a TikTok for the firm’s “12 Days of Gifts.” Every year, our human resources team coordinates gifts for employees in the twelve days leading up to our winter holiday. We release a video for each day announcing what the gift will be, and we asked for Jalen’s help in recording the video for a snack cart day this year.
While recording, Jalen was bubbly, affable… We had an absolute blast filming the video, and I immediately thought he would be a great interviewee. We sat down several weeks ago, and my hunch wasn’t wrong. Aside from being a bright person and giggly TikTok subject, Jalen has much to offer to his community and colleagues at Timmons Group.
Jalen is a project engineer in our Raleigh office where he works primarily with public municipality clients. His project workload is varied and includes parks, schools, master plans, mixed-use developments, road improvements, athletic complexes, law enforcement facilities, and a unique project for the National Guard. Out of all the projects he’s had the opportunity to touch in his time with the firm, he says his favorite have been school-based projects for local municipalities.
“I’ve really enjoyed working on the public school projects, especially those for our local Johnston County School System. We have been working on a gym expansion for the high school, and I’m really excited for the kids and faculty to experience it once it’s complete,” Jalen said.
Jalen has been with the firm since June 2022 full-time and was an intern for a year prior. “It was a humbling experience,” Jalen said about his internship. He speaks highly of the opportunities he had and the people he worked with, some of whom he works with as a full-time employee now.
“Everyone was personable and always willing to lend themselves and their experiences to help you learn. As an intern, I was learning the process of grading sites and creating storm networks, which is hard work for someone who is just starting out. Being put in a challenging atmosphere with people who you can lean on and who support you is the best way to grow, and that’s what my internship helped me do.”
During his internship, Jalen was in school to earn a B.S. in Civil Engineering. He attended North Carolina Agricultural & Technical State University in Greensboro, which in October 2022 was named the country’s No. 1 HBCU by UniversityHQ.
Jalen admits to keeping to himself for the first few years of school. “I was not a talkative person, I was very to myself,” he recalled. “I went to classes, did my work. But college humbled me, and I learned that I had to dictate what I wanted out of school. So that’s when I started getting more involved and I found my real balance in my junior year.”
That junior year of school is when Jalen joined a nonprofit organization called The Village Mentoring, a program designed to mentor K-12 schoolchildren who primarily identify as Black. “We would do cleanups throughout the community, hold seminars and lectures, professionalism workshops… Really anything to help these kids learn how to be valuable members of their communities.” Jalen explained that the mentoring program’s mission statement is to uplift Black youth in local communities, a cornerstone of the organization that Jalen is very passionate about.
While in school, Jalen also joined a fraternity, Kappa Alpha Psi®, a decision he said was the best thing he did in college. “Being involved with that group taught me everything I needed to know about how to carry myself as a man in a professional world. That experience made me want to mentor other kids to do the same,” Jalen said. The fraternity’s motto is Achievement in Every Field of Human Endeavor, which Jalen said helped put things into perspective for him since joining the group.
Jalen’s experience with his fraternity and The Village Mentoring program were catalysts for his wanting to introduce kids in a variety of age ranges to civil engineering. One mentee, Jalen recalls, became interested in the AEC industry and Jalen pointed him in the direction of a school guidance counselor for more information about engineering as a career path. “I had great opportunities growing up to discover career paths, people giving me guidance on everything. Returning that to my community is my number one priority,” Jalen said.
Jalen’s being an advocate for his community and local young adults is no shock, given his investment in public sector engineering work. His robust experiences in enriching the lives of local kids molded his own life in the process. “It’s about giving back,” Jalen said. “Everything we do, whether it’s helping a young adult or designing schools, is meant to give something back to our community.”
Interested in joining Jalen’s team? Check out our current land development job openings in Raleigh.
