Kristen Goncalves, 29

If you’ve ever passed through New York City’s Moynihan Train Hall and enjoyed it more than the bowels of Penn Station, you have Kristen Goncalves to thank. 

Goncalves is a superintendent with Skanska USA Civil, a role in which she supervises all craft and subcontractor craft employees, and coordinates various facets of work between different trades on civil projects from wastewater treatment plants to transportation hubs across the New York metro region.

Goncalves has been with Skanska USA Civil for seven years, and served as an assistant superintendent for nearly two years on the $1.6 billion redevelopment of Moynihan Train Hall. She helped oversee about 500 craft employees working on the concourse level every shift, and helped weather the storm that COVID brought toward the end of the project. The train hall opened to the public on Jan. 1, 2021.

“I’m just in awe of what it became from what it started as,” Goncalves said. “It’s awesome when you’re standing there as part of the contracting team, to see people come up the escalator for the first time and take it all in, take pictures, and just admire how amazing it is.”

It’s that sense of service to a greater good that drove Goncalves toward civil projects in the first place. She’s currently working as superintendent on a $108 million project to replace the six main sewage pumps of the Coney Island Waste Water Resource Facility in Brooklyn. She explained that it’s a tricky project because the plant has to maintain operations or else they would be “flooding peoples’ basements in Brooklyn.” 

She likes that her work touches many people, even if they don’t know it.

“The best part of the job is how much we can change an environment or a neighborhood or just make people’s lives better on that larger scale,” she said.