From Intern to HVAC Executive Director

When Jessica Peeters’ phone rang one day last fall, and she saw Steve Adkins’ name on the screen, she didn’t think too much of it. After all, she’d had the same cell number since high school. Old contacts called from time to time.

And to be sure, this was an old contact. Twenty years ago, Peeters was a junior at the Milwaukee School of Engineering studying architectural engineering with an emphasis on plumbing and HVAC. One day, she spotted a listing for a project manager intern at a small plumbing company called CornerStone Plumbing. 

She applied, interviewed and clicked immediately with Adkins.

Adkins reminded Peeters of her parents, both entrepreneurs who did whatever it took to get the job done because that was the dream.

“They showed up to make it happen every day,” she adds, “They were always wearing many different hats while getting pulled in all directions. It was the same with Steve, just watching someone show up and get the job done. It’s always nice to work with hard-working people.”

Peeters spent her time at CornerStone designing plumbing systems, drawing them up and getting them ready for approval. Back then, the company was just a few people in the office and a couple of guys in the field.

After about a year, the pace caught up with her. Full-time work alongside a rigorous MSOE course load became too much, and Peeters reluctantly gave her notice.

Phone call and coffee

When Adkins called Peeters last year, he was gearing up to open a new HVAC Mechanical division in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, about a 90-minute drive from CornerStone One’s headquarters that would expand the company service area into Northeastern Wisconsin.

Adkins told her he was going all-in on HVAC and was looking for the right person to build the division from the ground up. Two people came to her mind right away.

Later, they met for coffee at a Starbucks. “By the time I sat down with him,” Peeters says, “I was like, ‘You are really going to like so-and-so — strong background, great potential.’ And I’ll never forget his body language. He just sat back in his chair, smiled and said, ‘I came here for you.’”

Peeters accepted the role, drawing on her accomplishments and experiences to guide the division ahead.

After college, she went on to other roles in the PHCP industry, including working as an HVAC designer at Kohler Co. and an HVAC engineer at Bassett Mechanical, our Contractor of the Year in 2021. Throughout her professional career, she developed expertise in engineering, project management and leadership roles.

“I covered the gamut,” she says. “Anything from commercial healthcare to foundries, paper mills and cheese facilities.”

We visited Peeters at the Oshkosh facility, where a sheet metal fabrication shop is up and running, staffed by a shop technician and supported by a small office team. Field workers from the immediate Fox Valley area are still to come — the division currently draws on six union workers from the Milwaukee local — but that changes as the project pipeline grows.

“Once we land that first really big job here, we’ll start hiring locally,” she says. “That’s the plan.”

In the near term, Peeters is focused on perfecting the division’s estimating systems and continuing to pursue plan-and-spec work through the company’s long-time relationships with general contractors. Current work in Northeastern Wisconsin includes a water pump station, a school project nearing completion and several commercial office buildouts.