President
CG Schmidt | Milwaukee
Eric Schmidt is president of CG Schmidt Inc., a Milwaukee-based, family-owned construction management firm. Schmidt has helped lead some of the company’s most notable projects, including the Milwaukee Art Museum’s Calatrava-designed addition and, more recently, the Journal Square Lofts and the Milwaukee Athletic Club’s redevelopment. Schmidt joined his family business in 1991 as a field engineer and worked his way up to senior vice president in 2019 and then president in 2022.
Education: Bachelor’s, University of Wisconsin-Madison; MBA, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
The future of your industry: “I foresee the future of construction and construction services centering on leveraging robotics and artificial intelligence to solve the current manpower shortages.”
What would you do if you could choose another career: “Ferrari test driver. I have a passion for motorized recreation, and Ferrari is the pinnacle within their respective market.”
Advice for first-time leaders: “People have a multiplier effect, which is good and bad. Great people raise the performance of everyone around them, making it critical for a leader to surround themselves with people superior to themselves, while embodying the same core values that you and the organization are built upon.”
Thing to learn this year: “I need to learn another language. I had years of German in school, but I never kept it up. I have friends who travel around the world and challenge themselves to learn the language well enough to get by, and I would like to follow their lead.”
