Miller the Driller’s Young Named President of AGC of America

Kristine Young, CEO of Des Moines, Iowa-based Miller the Driller, was recently named as the first female president of the Associated General Contractors of America.

As president, Young will oversee AGC’s efforts to advocate for measures to boost demand for construction activity by enacting pro-growth tax and trade policies and making much-needed investments to the nation’s aging infrastructure.

Beyond being the first female president of AGC of America, Young also has the distinction of what may be the first president whose business is being reorganized under the protection of federal bankruptcy court.

According to an article in the DesMoines Register, Gene Miller Inc., the parent company of Miller the Driller filed a Chapter 11 bankruptcy court proceeding in January to protect it from Valley Bank, which is seeking immediate repayment of a $2.8 million loan. Young has been president of the business her father Gene Miller founded in 1948 since 1982.

AGC spokesman Brian Turmail told the newspaper that, given the volatile nature of the construction industry, he was unsure whether the association has ever had a president before who was going through a bankruptcy.

Young has served on AGC committees for seven years and has been in line to take over the presidency for three years. Her business problems, said Turmail in the article, are “indicative of the challenges that this industry is facing.”

Young told the DesMoines Register, “The timing wasn’t what I’d planned for 2011. But I did what I had to do, what I needed to do to protect my business, my customers, my employees and our family.” Miller the Driller employs about 25 people in the Des Moines area and another 15 to 25 around the Midwest.

In addition to Young, AGC inaugurated Joseph Jarboe, senior vice president of Clark Construction Group, Bethesda, Md., as senior vice president. Paul Diederich, president of Industrial Builders Inc., West Fargo, N.D., is AGC’s new vice president, and Howard Pebley, president of McAllen Construction, Inc., McAllen, Texas, is the treasurer.