Founders Friday (10/4): Wissam Akra of Tough Leaf

​Join us this Friday morning to chat with Wissam Akra, Founder and CEO of Tough Leaf. Tough Leaf has raised $7.8M (From Reformation, AlleyCorp, and more) to connect construction clients with diverse and local construction businesses – with the underlying mission to drive diversity and inclusion in the construction industry.

​Tough Leaf aims to streamline the process for general contractors, developers, and agencies to get qualified bidders and meet compliance requirements, with the dual aim of getting the best people connected to the right job, while also enabling minority-, women-, veteran-, and locally-owned businesses to better meet opportunity. It’s a platform and managed marketplace for both sides of the equation, where the vetting, matching, and delivery of subcontractor-to-project outcomes is handled by Tough Leaf, helping bidders and clients alike focus on the work they do best.

​Before founding Tough Leaf, Wissam was an accomplished construction engineer, with an Executive MBA and MS in Construction Engineering & Management from Columbia University.

​We’ll discuss the future of diversity in construction, the role of technology and AI in fostering inclusion, and Wissam’s founder journey in building (pun intended!) Tough Leaf from the ground up.