Redefine Possibility Vol. 1 - May 2024 | Page 8

Kaitlin McCarthy is an emerging powerhouse. She is the founder and CEO of Ionic Development Company, one of the few women-owned development companies in Boston.

Tell us about your career journey and how you made the decision to start Ionic.

My career journey really started when I was little. I was very interested in architecture and would draw houses and look at floor plans in my mom's Good Housekeeping magazine. When I was in high school, I had a math teacher talk to me about engineering and recommend me for a program where I got to see that civil engineering had an architectural aspect. I went on to study Civil Engineering at Northeastern, and through the co-op program, I was able to really see that being a part of building buildings is where I wanted to be. When I graduated, I joined Turner Construction, which is where I learned how to actually build a building and gained experience as a field engineer, project engineer, and eventually as head of our internal financial department. It was in that role where I realized that I wanted to be involved more on the business side and earlier on in the process, which would mean moving over to the real estate development side, really understanding when decisions were made and being a part of the design process.