Employee Q&A: Linda Osgood

We want to take the time to recognize our longest-tenured employee at The Building People, Linda Osgood. Linda is the Senior Vice President of Strategy & Quality with The Building People. She was the first employee for The Building People 9 years ago. Linda also served as an independent contractor for The Building People for about a year before becoming an official employee, so she has been with The Building People for about 10 years. If you know anything about The Building People or are part of the team here, you know Linda. She’s the engine that helps make The Building People team go. Over her time, Linda has worked in just about every capacity for The Building People and continues to do whatever is needed on a daily basis to help our amazing team grow. Thank you for all your hard work, Linda! The Building People team looks forward to you helping to steer our ship into the future.

Here’s a bit more from Linda and her history at The Building People.

How did you get started with The Building People?

I spent my first year with The Building People as a 1099 contractor. So I’ve actually been with the company for 10 years, with 9 years as an employee. I worked with Larry in the federal government for many years. In 2013 I announced that she was retiring from the federal government. Larry approached me and asked what I planned to do after I retired. I let him know I was going to look for another job outside the government. That is when Larry let me know that he was planning on leaving the government and starting his own business and wanted to see if I would be interested in helping him getting it started. I said, “Sure, I’ll help out for awhile.” I initially starting working part-time on a contract before Larry had even officially started The Building People. After Larry officially founded The Building People, we joined together to work as a sub-contractor to an IT contractor for the Army Corp of Engineers. That’s how it all started. It was just Larry and I for the first year and a half.

How has your role evolved?

Initially, Larry and I both did everything. We were doing sales, marketing, and delivery of everything else as we were trying to grow the company. We set some directional goals for the company to help us grow. Then we started to bring some other folks on, like Charles Dilley and Jorie Fields. Now we’ve grown from just us two to about 350 or so people today.

What is your professional background?

For the federal government, I was doing real estate and workplace management solutions. I also have an HR background. That’s how I started in the federal government. My background is a mixture of human capital and the HR side of it. I headed up human capital for about 8 years in the federal government with the Public Buildings Service at GSA, with about 3000 employees under us to do training, development, and competency modeling, among other things.

Before that, I had a real estate background with GSA doing policy & procedures for design, construction, and portfolio analysis. So my background is a little bit of everything, with a focus on HR, workplace management, and real estate.

What is your current role at TBP?

What is a fun fact about you that people may not know?