As the daughter of a prominent San Diego developer, it came as no surprise to those who know her when Tami Barnhart-Reese became the president of her own construction company – Barnhart-Reese Construction, Inc.
Yet Barnhart Reese is different than her hard-charging father, Doug Barnhart. Reserved but effective is how some describe her.

“Wicked smart”, is what longtime friend Robyn Krammerer said of her former sorority sister at the University of San Diego.

Myrna Marston, who gave Barnhart-Reese her first full-time job out of college as a public relations representative after hiring her as an intern, said that Barnhart-Reese “didn’t’ just crank out press releases.”

“She built relationships. She demanded results from herself on a project that she worked on,” said Marston, who now counts Barnhart-Reese Construction as one of her clients.

Discipline

The mother of two boys, aged 18 and 14, Barnhart-Reese said that if she hadn’t followed the same career as her father, she would have enjoyed being a nutritionist.

“I’m fascinated by (the) science behind nutrition and its effect on the body. I enjoy reading about that and meal planning. If you had asked five-year-old me, I probably would have said Miss America.”

She never competed — “I just liked to watch the pageants, that was five-year-old me,” Barnhart-Reese said.

Always athletic, she swam competitively in local swim meets until she was about 12-years old.

“I definitely built some discipline doing that, every day, a couple of hours, back and forth swimming. I was OK. I did make the Junior Olympics in the back stroke.”

At Poway High School, she ran track and cross country and still runs for exercise today.

Inspiration

Growing up, Barnhart-Reese said she would often hang out in her father’s office, and worked there during summers while she was in school, rotating through different jobs.

“It gave me a sense of how the departments connected and how the business was organized,” Barnhart-Reese said.

Majoring in business administration at USD with a minor in Spanish, Barnhart-Reese’s interests leaned toward marketing.

Her job with Marston & Marston involved working on the 1996 Republican National Convention. Her assignment included serving as a driver for Elizabeth Dole, wife of the 1996 Republican vice presidential candidate Bob Dole, along with other prominent women.

“That whole event actually inspired me. Those were women business owners,” Barnhart-Reese said.

Her older sister, Tara, took a different route and is an assistant professor at Chapman University in Orange County, teaching science education in the College of Education.

Legacy

Because her own interests were in marketing and public relations, Barnhart-Reese said that she wasn’t sure that construction was for her. She said that changed when bidding on public projects moved from simply submitting the lowest bid to preparing more elaborate presentations in response to Requests for Proposals (RFPs).

“Companies like my dad’s had to pivot and take on marketing professionals to produce RFP proposals and prepare for interviews to obtain work,” Barnhart-Reese said.

“This helped me envision a role in the construction industry.”

Barnhart-Reese and her husband, West Reese, formed Barnhart-Reese Construction in 2008. Reese is CEO and Barnhart-Reese’s father keeps his hand in as chairman. Doug Barnhart sold his original company, Douglas E. Barnhart, Inc. to Balfour Beatty Construction in 2008. “That’s her legacy,” said Glynna Hoekstra, a former colleague of Barnhart-Reese’s. “I can’t imagine her working for someone else.”

Quieter than her father, Barnhart can be disarming and is “very savvy,” Hoekstra said. “She can read a room and understand which direction the conversation needs to go. She’s very funny, has a very funny, dry sense of humor,” Hoekstra said. “She’s very serious about her craft but has a pretty wicked sense of humor.”

Krammerer, who roomed with Barnhart-Reese in a Mission Beach apartment when the two were in college, recalled cruising the beach in a Mustang convertible that Barnhart-Reese owned.

“I just thought it was the coolest thing,” said Krammerer, a Connecticut native who said Barnhart-Reese introduced her to the California lifestyle and became a lifelong friend.

“I was her maid of honor and she was my maid of honor when she was six months pregnant in the freezing cold in Connecticut,” Krammerer said. “It showed how she wants to always be there, no matter what.”

When Doug Barnhart sold his original company, the terms of the sale prohibited the use of the Barnhart name on any other construction company for five years, so the new company that Barnhart-Reese and West Reese formed was initially J. Reese Construction, Inc., named for Tami and West’s older son, Jake.

The name was later changed to Barnhart-Reese Construction.

Barnhart-Reese said the project that she’s proudest is one that’s named for her parents, the Douglas & Nancy Barnhart Cancer Center at Sharp Chula Vista Medical Center.

“It was a legacy project for the family. Not only was it challenging, it was a way to give back to the Chula Vista community, which has been a large part of the family success,” Barnhart-Reese said.