FAB 50
A HAND UP
Business Journal
WINSLEY DURAND III BUILT A CAREER HELPING OTHERS
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CELEBRATING 50 YEARS
YOUR BUSINESS AUTHORITY ACROSS NEBRASKA & BEYOND
MBJ.COM
VOLUME 52, No. 27
$2.00
JUNE 26, 2026
The Trust Builder HENDERSON BRINGS COMBAT LESSONS TO HDR’S HELM BY DAISY HUTZELL-RODMAN In 2003, an Army captain with a freshly minted graduate degree in water resources engineering arrived in Iraq to find no Gulf Region Division of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers existed, the unit responsible for restarting irrigation systems, power plants and shattered infrastructure across the country. By the time John W. Henderson left, there was one. He’d helped build it. That same instinct still runs through HDR, the Omaha-based architecture and engineering firm Henderson now leads as chairman and chief executive officer. Raised in the Black Hills and trained as a civil engineer at the South Dakota School of Mines and Technology, Henderson spent nearly 24 years in Army Corps of Engineers leadership, including three combat tours, before serving as assistant secretary of the Air Force. He joined HDR in 2021 expecting to run a survey crew or sweep floors. Instead, then-CEO Eric Keen made him chief administrative officer, a crash course in the enterprise he’d later lead. Today, HDR is among the largest employeeowned architecture and engineering firms in the country, and Henderson is focused on keeping that culture intact as the company
ENGINEERING
WANTED: FUNDAMENTALS, PROFICIENCY BUILDING COMMUNITIES, TECH-SAVVY ENGINEERING WORKFORCE In conjunction with the University of Nebraska Omaha’s Center for Public Affairs Research, the Aksarben Foundation in its Nebraska Tech Workforce Dashboard noted ENGINEERING ON PAGE 11
HENDERSON ON PAGE 06
FEATURE ENGINEERING HER PATH
MIDLANDS LEADER Q&A DAN HOPPEN,
RICHARDSON IS SECOND WOMAN TO LEAD ACEC NEBRASKA
HURRDAT ONE
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