I've had the privilege of knowing Darrell Hallmark for many years — working alongside him on some of the biggest projects in the Texas utility industry. So, when I sat down with him for this episode of From Boots to Boardroom, I already knew the conversation would be something special. What I didn't fully anticipate was just how much wisdom he'd pack into a single conversation.
Darrell has been in the utility and construction industry for 54 years. He started before I was even born — a fact he was happy to remind me of. His career is a testament to what grit, authenticity, and common sense can accomplish in America, and his story deserves to be heard by anyone building a career with their hands, their minds, or both.
Darrell's journey started the way a lot of great careers in this industry do — humbly. Fresh out of high school (well, without technically finishing — he later earned his GED), he was working two and three jobs at a time: a candy company during the day, convenience stores at night, framing houses on the weekends. When Texas Power and Light offered him $525 a month in 1972, he thought he was rich.
He started in the warehouse — handling transformers, substation materials, transmission equipment — and learned the business from the ground up, eventually running that storeroom. From there, he moved into Field Construction Coordination (FCC), overseeing contractor work across substations, transmission, and distribution. At one point, he was managing over 200 contract FCCs.
Then came the leap to the contractor side. TESSCO saw how Darrell operated — essentially running their crews better than they could themselves — and made him an offer he couldn't refuse. It was roughly double his pay. But when he arrived, he discovered the company had one foot in bankruptcy.
He called his wife in tears. Her response? "Well, you better get that damn thing turned around."
And he did.
When I asked Darrell what his secret was — how he's turned struggling companies into profitable operations time and again — his answer was refreshingly simple.
You can't diagnose problems from behind a desk. You have to see what's happening in the field — the personnel, the equipment, the way jobs are bid. Only then can you start making the right adjustments.
Darrell told me one of his greatest tricks: when five guys are all talking over each other in a meeting, he'd sit back and listen. He'd take the best idea from each person, synthesize it, and present the plan. "They thought I was smart as God," he laughed. The truth is, he was smart enough to know that the best ideas often come from the people closest to the work.
Not performatively. Not as a retention strategy. Darrell genuinely cares about the men and women in the field — their families, their time away from home, their wellbeing. He'd find ways to get crews home more often, work creative schedules like 10 days on and 4 off when he could. "You can throw money at them," he told me, "but somebody else will throw money at them too. You have to care about them, and they have to believe it."
One of the most practical takeaways from our conversation was Darrell's approach to profit-sharing and incentive programs. At TESSCO, after his initial assessment — which involved gathering about a hundred employees in the yard, laying out the new expectations, and watching 75 of them walk out the gate — he built the company back up with the 25 who stayed.
A key piece of that rebuild was a bonus structure tied directly to project profitability. For every percentage point above the target margin, the crew's bonus grew. But there were stipulations: blow a motor on a dozer because of negligence, it comes out of the bonus. Have a safety incident, no bonus at all.
The behavioral change was immediate. Equipment that wasn't needed got off the job site. Crews started managing their projects like owners. People brought their lunches instead of taking two-hour restaurant breaks. The little things that eat into profit margins suddenly mattered to everyone — because everyone had skin in the game.
I walked this exact same path at Think Power, and I can confirm: when people feel they're getting a fair share of the profits, everything changes.
Darrell and I both remember a time when utilities couldn't even speak to contractors about safety practices. He was one of the people who pushed for change, bringing concerns to upper management until policies shifted. That culture shift — from silence to active engagement on safety — has saved countless lives across the industry.
He also developed what he called a "Foreman's Academy" — bringing foremen in for training on the things everyone assumes they already know: paperwork, documentation, project management basics. Too often, he observed, good workers get promoted too quickly without the training to succeed in their new roles. As Darrell put it: "If you don't turn the paperwork in, you didn't do it."
Those gaps in training and documentation are exactly what inspired me to build KYRO — to digitize field work so that people can document what they do more easily and bridge the gap between the field and the office.
If there's one constant theme across Darrell's 54-year career, it's this: he bridges the gap between the people doing the work and the people planning it. From materials management to FCC to running contractor operations to leading companies as a senior vice president, he's always been the person who could translate between the field and the front office.
He earned the respect of engineers not by having a degree, but by being able to look at a plan and profile, do a material takeoff, and tell them their quantities were wrong. And he was humble enough to learn from them in return. "They brought a lot to me too," he said. "They didn't know it, but they did."
That symbiotic relationship between engineering and construction — mutual respect, shared goals, open communication — is something I've spent my entire career advocating for. The people who get it become wildly successful. The ones who don't? They struggle, no matter how many degrees they have on the wall.
I asked Darrell what he'd say to young people considering a career in the trades. His answer carried the weight of five decades of experience — and a promise his father made on his deathbed: "Son, if I'd known you were gonna do this good, I'd have sent you to college."
Darrell wishes he'd had more formal education — he believes it makes you more well-rounded. But he's also living proof that you don't need a degree to build an extraordinary career. He's had superintendents working for him who out-earned him as a senior vice president. Common sense, work ethic, and the willingness to learn will take you further than any diploma alone.
His final words of wisdom were the simplest and maybe the most important: "Find a balance in life. God, family, and your job. Those are the three things that matter."
Darrell Hallmark is one of those people who has quietly powered America for over half a century. No fanfare, no press tours — just decades of showing up, solving problems, caring about people, and getting the job done. I'm honored to call him a friend and a colleague, and I'm grateful he shared his story with us.
If Darrell's journey teaches us anything, it's this: success in this industry isn't about where you start. It's about how you listen, how you lead, and how much you care.
Listen to the full episode on From Boots to Boardroom.
I've had the privilege of knowing Darrell Hallmark for many years — working alongside him on some of the biggest projects in the Texas utility industry. So, when I sat down with him for this episode of From Boots to Boardroom, I already knew the conversation would be something special. What I didn't fully anticipate was just how much wisdom he'd pack into a single conversation.
Darrell has been in the utility and construction industry for 54 years. He started before I was even born — a fact he was happy to remind me of. His career is a testament to what grit, authenticity, and common sense can accomplish in America, and his story deserves to be heard by anyone building a career with their hands, their minds, or both.
Darrell's journey started the way a lot of great careers in this industry do — humbly. Fresh out of high school (well, without technically finishing — he later earned his GED), he was working two and three jobs at a time: a candy company during the day, convenience stores at night, framing houses on the weekends. When Texas Power and Light offered him $525 a month in 1972, he thought he was rich.
He started in the warehouse — handling transformers, substation materials, transmission equipment — and learned the business from the ground up, eventually running that storeroom. From there, he moved into Field Construction Coordination (FCC), overseeing contractor work across substations, transmission, and distribution. At one point, he was managing over 200 contract FCCs.
Then came the leap to the contractor side. TESSCO saw how Darrell operated — essentially running their crews better than they could themselves — and made him an offer he couldn't refuse. It was roughly double his pay. But when he arrived, he discovered the company had one foot in bankruptcy.
He called his wife in tears. Her response? "Well, you better get that damn thing turned around."
And he did.
When I asked Darrell what his secret was — how he's turned struggling companies into profitable operations time and again — his answer was refreshingly simple.
You can't diagnose problems from behind a desk. You have to see what's happening in the field — the personnel, the equipment, the way jobs are bid. Only then can you start making the right adjustments.
Darrell told me one of his greatest tricks: when five guys are all talking over each other in a meeting, he'd sit back and listen. He'd take the best idea from each person, synthesize it, and present the plan. "They thought I was smart as God," he laughed. The truth is, he was smart enough to know that the best ideas often come from the people closest to the work.
Not performatively. Not as a retention strategy. Darrell genuinely cares about the men and women in the field — their families, their time away from home, their wellbeing. He'd find ways to get crews home more often, work creative schedules like 10 days on and 4 off when he could. "You can throw money at them," he told me, "but somebody else will throw money at them too. You have to care about them, and they have to believe it."
One of the most practical takeaways from our conversation was Darrell's approach to profit-sharing and incentive programs. At TESSCO, after his initial assessment — which involved gathering about a hundred employees in the yard, laying out the new expectations, and watching 75 of them walk out the gate — he built the company back up with the 25 who stayed.
A key piece of that rebuild was a bonus structure tied directly to project profitability. For every percentage point above the target margin, the crew's bonus grew. But there were stipulations: blow a motor on a dozer because of negligence, it comes out of the bonus. Have a safety incident, no bonus at all.
The behavioral change was immediate. Equipment that wasn't needed got off the job site. Crews started managing their projects like owners. People brought their lunches instead of taking two-hour restaurant breaks. The little things that eat into profit margins suddenly mattered to everyone — because everyone had skin in the game.
I walked this exact same path at Think Power, and I can confirm: when people feel they're getting a fair share of the profits, everything changes.
Darrell and I both remember a time when utilities couldn't even speak to contractors about safety practices. He was one of the people who pushed for change, bringing concerns to upper management until policies shifted. That culture shift — from silence to active engagement on safety — has saved countless lives across the industry.
He also developed what he called a "Foreman's Academy" — bringing foremen in for training on the things everyone assumes they already know: paperwork, documentation, project management basics. Too often, he observed, good workers get promoted too quickly without the training to succeed in their new roles. As Darrell put it: "If you don't turn the paperwork in, you didn't do it."
Those gaps in training and documentation are exactly what inspired me to build KYRO — to digitize field work so that people can document what they do more easily and bridge the gap between the field and the office.
If there's one constant theme across Darrell's 54-year career, it's this: he bridges the gap between the people doing the work and the people planning it. From materials management to FCC to running contractor operations to leading companies as a senior vice president, he's always been the person who could translate between the field and the front office.
He earned the respect of engineers not by having a degree, but by being able to look at a plan and profile, do a material takeoff, and tell them their quantities were wrong. And he was humble enough to learn from them in return. "They brought a lot to me too," he said. "They didn't know it, but they did."
That symbiotic relationship between engineering and construction — mutual respect, shared goals, open communication — is something I've spent my entire career advocating for. The people who get it become wildly successful. The ones who don't? They struggle, no matter how many degrees they have on the wall.
I asked Darrell what he'd say to young people considering a career in the trades. His answer carried the weight of five decades of experience — and a promise his father made on his deathbed: "Son, if I'd known you were gonna do this good, I'd have sent you to college."
Darrell wishes he'd had more formal education — he believes it makes you more well-rounded. But he's also living proof that you don't need a degree to build an extraordinary career. He's had superintendents working for him who out-earned him as a senior vice president. Common sense, work ethic, and the willingness to learn will take you further than any diploma alone.
His final words of wisdom were the simplest and maybe the most important: "Find a balance in life. God, family, and your job. Those are the three things that matter."
Darrell Hallmark is one of those people who has quietly powered America for over half a century. No fanfare, no press tours — just decades of showing up, solving problems, caring about people, and getting the job done. I'm honored to call him a friend and a colleague, and I'm grateful he shared his story with us.
If Darrell's journey teaches us anything, it's this: success in this industry isn't about where you start. It's about how you listen, how you lead, and how much you care.
Listen to the full episode on From Boots to Boardroom.
Hari Vasudevan, PE, is a serial entrepreneur and engineer focused on AI-driven solutions for utilities, construction, and storm response. As Founder and CEO of KYRO AI, he leads the development of AI-powered software that helps utility, vegetation, and field service teams digitize operations, improve storm response and restoration, and reduce operational risk. He also serves as Vice Chair and Strategic Adviser for the Edison Electric Institute’s Transmission Subject Area Committee and holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees in civil engineering with professional engineering licensure in multiple states.
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