Environmental Forces, Inc.

Teresa Jakeway, CPESC, CPSWQ, CESSWI, QSD, is the Owner/President of Environmental Forces. She works out of its main office in Fontana, California. She's been in the construction industry since graduating from high school, when she landed a job as a payables clerk at Gothic Landscape, Inc., a large company with branches in California, Arizona, Nevada and Utah. In addition to big commercial and government landscape projects, the company also has a division devoted to environmental restoration. After 15 years, "I ended up as a grading manager, working with soil and learning about its characteristics. With all of the rules and regulations coming into play more and more over the years, it was just a natural transition from that into doing environmental work." She thinks part of what made her a success at Gothic, a family owned business, was the fact that she grew up in one. Her family owned a general store in rural Rocky Mount, North Carolina, that eventually morphed into a popular restaurant called Westry's Take out",serving fried chicken and North Carolina-style barbeque. Jakeway explains, "My grandfather was born on the property, which was our homestead. The house and store were maybe a hundred feet apart. You'd walk out the back door of the house into the back door of the store". That experience gave Jakeway a strong work ethic. "We were never assigned a particular role. Whatever job needed to be done, you just did it. It opens your mind into looking at things in different ways." In 2004, she was recruited by Pardee Homes, where she was an environmental supervisor, leaving in 2006 when she was asked to run Centex Homes' stormwater program. Her next job was with the County of Riverside, California, doing grading inspections and running their NPDES program. While working for the county, a man she's work with at Centex asked her to join him at Aimes. 

The company was opening a regional office out of Southern, CA, and I was hired to set up their environmental program. My specialty is stormwater, but also facilitate compliance with equipment emissions, biological and hazardous materials regulations, the whole gamut. Then she was decided to make a name for herself and begin her own family owned business covering all areas of environmental services in the construction industries.