Salas O’Brien ranked No. 2 on the 2025 Real Leaders Top Impact Companies list in recognition for engineering a better built environment.
Salas O’Brien is an employee-owned engineering and technical services firm focused on advancing the human experience through the built environment. It operates at the center of important global issues, including sustainability, energy efficiency, resilience, and decarbonization, helping clients in critical markets achieve operational goals while advancing team members through growth and opportunity. Here, Salas O’Brien CEO Darin Anderson shares his knowledge and experience with Real Leaders.
Real Leaders: How do you thrive in the impact space?
Darin Anderson: In a competitive market, finding and keeping top talent is essential, so we make sure our team members are rewarded well and equitably for their contributions and have no limits to their professional growth or rewards. Employee ownership is open to everyone, and it’s truly been a game-changer. Our people don’t just act like owners — they are owners.
RL: What milestones have you achieved this year?
Anderson: At the start of 2024, we announced a strategic minority investment from Blackstone, providing us with the resources to amplify our impact while remaining super majority employee-owned. We also broke into the top 50 of Engineering News-Record’s Top 500 Design Firms. Additionally, we achieved an exceptional +50 eNPS score, 250% three-year revenue growth, and 99% leadership retention over 15 years.
RL: What is the biggest challenge you’ve overcome?
Anderson: Filling the pipeline of talent required to deliver on the demand for our services — both the sheer number of professionals and the level of technical expertise needed — continues to be a big challenge for us and our industry peers. Through Q3 2024 we’ve hired over 400 team members, which is nearly 10% of our entire team member base. We streamlined our candidate sourcing processes, and this is helping us reach a greater range of military and early career individuals through programs like Hiring our Heroes, The Honor Foundation, and relationships with historically Black colleges and universities with strong engineering and technical programs.
RL: What is your best strategy for finding investors?
Anderson: We seek out like-minded partners who share our values and vision for success. I always ask three questions: Are they a healthy, vibrant, and strong organization? Do their leaders care, and are they in this for the long run? Are we stronger and better together? My goal is to make sure we have the healthiest environment possible for our team members and that we’re delivering meaningful projects that support our clients’ goals. If there isn’t alignment, we move on.
RL: What is your long-term, mission-oriented dream?
Anderson: Our long-term vision is to be a model organization for the world — transparent, vibrant, nimble, and accountable. We aim to create an equitable environment with no limits for anyone to achieve success, while creating a better future through our work, ensuring hospitals have reliable power, improving food quality in pharmaceutical production, and finding ways to preserve our precious resources.
RL: What is your best advice for fellow impact CEOs?
Anderson: Be clear on what success looks for you and your organization, take care of the people around you, share the rewards equitably, and surround yourself with great people and partners in life.
