Stepping into a new industry can be challenging or intimidating, but for Amanda Mohr, it brought tremendous growth. This week, the President of Superior Bowen shares how her background in finance became a powerful foundation for leading with precision, adaptability, and authenticity. Through her commitment to lifelong learning, she’s embraced every challenge as an opportunity for growth. Whether she's innovating operational practices at Superior Bowen or championing women in the industry through Women of Asphalt, Amanda’s stayed true to her core values of hard work and commitment to excellence. If you’re considering an industry pivot or want to transition your skills, this episode offers actionable advice. Tune in today!
Released May 27, 2025
Could you tell us a little bit about yourself and your career path?
Thanks Richard and Brett. I'm the president of Superior Bowen. We're a heavy civil construction company and we started in business in 1948, so we've been around 77 years. We specialize in asphalt paving and production materials, testing and analysis, site preparation, development planning and earth work. Superior Bowen is a Legacy Infrastructure Group company alongside Haskell Lemon in Oklahoma City and J&R Construction in Southwest Kansas. My path is not a typical one, but I think there are a lot of steps along the way that set a foundation for where I'm at today.
I grew up on a farm in the middle of Kansas and really learned the value of hard work. I gained a deep respect for the hands-on nature of work with that foundational childhood experience. When I went to college, I wanted to blend my love for people and numbers so I majored in accounting. For the first 14 years of my career, I had fairly traditional accounting roles. I earned my CPA certification. I worked in public accounting. I worked in private industry, just not in our industry, but that experience was helpful for my role today because my boss emphasized the importance of really understanding the numbers and not just reporting them. So I learned the value of having the curiosity of a student being eager to learn about operations and about people, and then having the heart of a teacher and translating that knowledge into helping others understand the link between their operating decisions and the financial results.
I came into the industry in 2010 when I joined an operating company that Summit Materials had just acquired. For those who don't know, Summit was a construction materials company that started in 2009. It was backed by Blackstone Private Equity and issued an IPO in 2015 and then sold in 2025. Through that experience, I spent about a decade there in strategic financial roles and really gained a deep understanding of our industry and appreciation for the people of our industry. Then in March of 2020, I joined the Bowen family in an accounting capacity to take care of their outside investments. Then in December of that year, I stepped into the role of president for Superior Bowen.
Could tell us how the skills you've learned through your career have helped you grow in your leadership in the construction industry?
Finance helped me grow into my leadership in the construction industry in a variety of ways. First, the circumstances to which I was indoctrinated into the industry in my first job at Summit, I helped implement an ERP system. When you do that, you really have to learn about the operational decisions that trigger a financial transaction. So you learn more deeply about the operations. Summit was an inquisitive company with some really lean forward ownership structures. I learned more from a breadth of experience basis where, finance was not just a necessary evil, they were viewed as a partner to operations. So I think there's three ways that experience really sharpened my leadership skills. First, I gained operational insight. I really understood both the details of what drove results and the big picture.
Second, strategic thinking and risk management. I have an analytical mindset naturally, and so I was able to use that to help balance risks, forecast impacts, and to make sure that the decisions that were made resulted in desired outcomes. I still use those skill sets today in my role where I am analyzing job costs or thinking about an investment in capital expenses or thinking about an org chart and what makes sense and maybe what doesn't. Then third, change management. I had a lot of change management experiences in finance and found out that merging companies was way more than merging financial statements. It was about addressing the concerns of people and aligning motivations. I heard a saying recently that's really resonated with me as a leader: I'm not responsible for only what I say, but also for what people hear. And that was true, especially in an environment of high change where the acquired companies would say we were told nothing was going to change and what they were actually told was ‘Hey, you will still have operational decision making.’ But what they heard was ‘you are going to submit payroll the same way, in the same system that you always have.’
So that experience taught me how critical it is to bring people along and to articulate the why behind change, both from a number perspective and a human perspective.
Could you explain the differences between family-owned and publicly traded businesses? And do you think the leadership requirements are different sometimes for family run companies?
I think every company is different no matter what the ownership structure is. I think the focus areas can be different as well. Private companies tend to focus on long-term legacies and public companies focus more on shareholder value or quarterly earnings that both aim for profitability and growth. One of the key strengths that I've experienced in this private company at Legacy Infrastructure Group is that of the entrepreneurial spirit. Trey Bowen, who's the CEO of Legacy, exemplifies this and that helped my own experience back in 2020 when he asked me to step into the role of President. He used his futuristic vision and his entrepreneurial mindset to prioritize leadership that's based on capability and trust rather than on tradition. You don't see a lot of family-owned companies being willing to sacrifice tradition. So I really appreciated that about Trey’s leadership. That brings me to a leadership requirement that I think is essential regardless of the environment and that's trust. Whether you're part of a public company or a family-owned business, I think trust is essential to moving the needle.
What are the most important leadership skills you see?
I really highly value courage and lifelong learning, in addition to trust or authenticity. When I think about courage, I think about having the courage to set a vision, stand by it, and bring people along in it. Courage to make the tough decisions, hold people accountable, lean into conflict, and surround yourself with people who are smarter than yourself. One of the things that I learned is courage is not the absence of fear, but it's pushing forward despite fear. From an authenticity or trust standpoint, people follow leaders that they trust. Trust is built through honesty, transparency, or vulnerability and consistency. In our industry, an industry where safety is critical, it's utmost importance to connect with people's hearts, not just their heads. I heard a quote recently by John Maxwell that says: people don't care how much you know until they know how much you care.
So if we're going to advance our industry from a safety perspective, I think it's very important that our leaders are authentic. On lifelong learning, that just underscores continuous improvement. The best leaders I have worked with have never stopped learning. Whether that's reading books, listening to podcasts like Pave It Black, attending conferences like NAPA where they can network with other people who are solving the same types of problems or just talk to the people in their field. That's one of my favorite things to do, going to talk to the people who are actually doing the work and ask them lots of questions and really try to learn and listen. I think if you're a lifelong learner, you are making better decisions and building stronger teams as a result.
Could you highlight why Women Who Mean Business and Women of Asphalt are important for our industry?
So Women Who Mean Business, which it's been rebranded to Women of Influence. It started as an award in Kansas City where 25 women are recognized each year for their career accomplishments and contributions, but it's more than an award. It's a network. So my Class of 2023, we get together once a month for happy hour or coffees, and I've traveled internationally with some of the alumni from this network. There's so much value in relationships. Our conversations range from strategic decision making to navigating difficult situations. Defining a balance between career and family responsibilities. Like many women in leadership, I'm balancing a demanding career. My husband also has a demanding career. We have a child at home, we have adult children. We have grandchildren and we have aging parents. So learning how others are managing these challenges and opportunities is really valuable.
For Women of Asphalt, I was recently asked to sit on their Advisory Board, very honored to do so. Only about 11% of employees in construction are women. Women of Asphalt does a great job of showcasing to women that they can have meaningful careers in our industry and that leadership is attainable. One thing I've learned is that research shows women are more reluctant than men to raise their hand for new opportunities. There was a Harvard Business Review article in 2014 that highlighted a study where men would apply for promotions if they had about 60% of the qualifications, but women felt like they needed to have 100% of those qualifications. I think those hesitations come from social, psychological, and industry norms that say that women have to prove it. But regardless, both of the organizations, both Women of Influence and Women of Asphalt, they connect similar women on similar paths. They highlight excellence and they provide support. From the high achieving women that I know, including myself, we really want to just have the same standards and expect to be held to the same standards of excellence, leadership, and results as anyone else.
Success in this industry, like in any industry, is based on hard work and a commitment to excellence. But when women see other women who are succeeding in our industry. When they have the right support system and when they're encouraged to step forward before they're perfectly ready, I think it opens the door to more women thriving in leadership.
How do you adapt to change and what advice would you give to leaders in industries that are evolving rapidly?
What I've seen is that the fundamentals of our industry haven't changed. People come first and strong business values always matter. No matter how the industry shifts, relationships, integrity, and quality are still the foundation. With that said, at Superior Bowen, we have a core value of learn, innovate, and grow. It's just part of our culture. We are intentional on where we want to push the limits.
Back when I started at Superior Bowen in 2020, we had already partnered with XBE and that was an example of where we wanted to be on the leading edge. XBE is a software program that is logistics and job planning. They were fairly new in their development, but Trey Bowen, had already put a stake in the ground and said ‘we want to be ahead.’ I think by communicating that to people, it just really provides a strong direction. As a result of our commitment with XBE, we've been able to drive efficiencies in our organization and it's been transformative to us. What I've learned really boils down to three points. Make informed strategic bets. So figure out where you want to chase the newest trend and where you want to let others chase the newest trend. Second, stay adaptable, but grounded. Change is inevitable. Make sure you're holding up to your core values and business fundamentals. Third, it's all about the people. The best solutions come from a strong team culture. So the more I can empower our people to learn, empower them to challenge the status quo, the stronger we'll grow together.
How have your leadership strengths changed since you joined the construction industry?
I've always had a push for continuous improvement, starting with myself. As I reflect over time, younger me made quicker assumptions. I was more black and white. I didn't value relationships as much as I do now. I didn't value having the right people on the bus as I value that now. I also didn't fully understand the power that having unique differences that people on the team could make that. Two plus two can equal more than four. When you have synergies from having just a diverse group of people. I heard a quote recently that says: if you want to go fast, go alone, but if you want to go far, go together. That's been a big learning point for me. If I can surround myself with the right team and provide and create space for true collaboration, then the entire team grows and so do the solutions. With all that said, I think the core values that I've stood for have been unchanged. Hard work, authenticity, commitment to excellence. Those things are the center of who I am. But my approach over the years has definitely matured, and it's not no longer a focus on what I do, but on who I do with and how I bring the people along.
You mentioned you have an executive coach; could you explain how this relationship has developed and how it's helped your leadership journey?
In my past, executive coaches were not used often and sometimes they were used to bridge a gap in leadership capabilities. When I joined Superior Bowen, almost the whole Executive Team was working with the same executive coach and I get to work with her today. She really helps to be a sounding board for me. She's an accountability partner and working with her has accelerated my growth as a leader. Having all the leaders work with the same person has assisted in organizational alignment and in ensuring that we all have a common language. So I've really felt the benefit of working with one and highly recommended.
Is there a particular book or mentor or author that you commonly lean that you would recommend to people who are wanting to grow and develop their leadership skills?
One more quote: the best leaders create more leaders. That quote is poignant to me because I've never had a formal mentor, but I've worked for, and with, a lot of great leaders. There's one leader in particular that I can think back to who was just transformative in being able to develop a culture and help others tie their value to the overall success of the organization. He was able to drive results. He invited me into meetings that didn't necessarily have anything to do with finance but gave me an overall purview of the organization as a whole and how different decisions all linked together. So his impact really did help create a better leader in me. Then more recently, I've been privileged to work closely with Trey Bowen and Matt Bowen and the rest of the Legacy team. They're a group of really dynamic leaders who care a lot about growing with excellence and we bring each other up. We've created, together, a business that I'm really proud of and we've taken it to the next step where companies who are looking for a unique solution to succession planning can participate.
If you could summarize your leadership journey in one sentence, what would that be?
My leadership journey has been a lot about stepping into challenges, about continuous learning, and earning trust through hard work integrity and a focus on people.
Do you have any challenges that helped you progress as a leader?
I think I have a lot. I definitely have made my share of mistakes along the way, whether that's in choosing what people to have on the bus. So that was something I said was really important. Having the right people on the bus or not focusing on the right things. A challenge though that wasn't necessarily a result of a mistake, but in 2022, that's recent enough where you would remember all the commodity cost spikes.
To couple with that, in Kansas City, we had a very tight, trucking market. So we really saw the impact of that negatively on our business. What I learned from that is just the importance of rallying the team. What we've done as a result is we now have pre-mortem meetings where we imagine what all could go wrong and what would our response to that be. So we're just focused sharper on mitigation. Then it was rallying, in a way, to get all the team together and really get everybody on the same page. It strengthened the cohesiveness that we had as a team to do that.
What's one piece of advice you think people should take away from this conversation that we've had today?
I would say view every challenge as an opportunity to learn and grow and lead by investing in genuine relationships.