Window of opportunity: Holly Bischoff's love for math adds up to a role as CFO

Photography contributed by EMJ / Holly Bischoff, chief financial officer for EMJ Construction

Holly Bischoff knew from her first week in finance at EMJ Construction in 2004 that she had found the formula for a career she would enjoy.

"I will never forget walking out of this building the first week and being like, 'This is so fun,'" says Bischoff, 47. "The things I was doing and applying were so fun, building stuff is fun."

In December 2020, Bischoff became the company's chief financial officer. In retrospect, the role leading finance for a billion-dollar construction company seems built for her, she says.

"One thing I loved a lot in my early college classes truly was construction accounting," Bischoff says. "I wasn't thinking about construction at the time, but the whole idea of percent complete and the accounting behind construction made sense to me."

From her earliest memory, Bischoff loved math, she says.

"It always came easy - like, got-near-perfect-grades-and-never-studied kind of easy," says Bischoff, who grew up in Crossville, Tennessee. She headed to college at Tennessee Tech to get an engineering degree, but then hit physics.

"Then I was like, maybe not," she says. "I found accounting and never looked back."

After earning a bachelor's degree in accounting at Tennessee Tech, and then a master of business administration from the University of Oregon, Bischoff made her way to Chattanooga to work for Arthur Andersen in 1998. Bischoff had been to Chattanooga for visits growing up, and her younger sister was a student at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga.

"I was excited about the idea of living in Chattanooga," she says.

After three years at Andersen, she moved into accounting at Brach's Candy. A few years after that, she faced a decision.

"They were relocating the corporate office to Dallas, and that's what led me to look for something else," she says. Bischoff wanted to live near family, and she had recently met her husband, which tipped the scales for staying put, she says.

"EMJ had an opening for a controller," Bischoff says. As part of her interview process, she met with then-CEO Jay Jolley, which was then a standard experience for anyone joining the company at any level, Bischoff says.

"There was a time when you had to meet Jay Jolley no matter what position you had, he wanted to meet you," she says. "It was a culture thing - culture is such a huge part of the company."

Since its founding 1968, EMJ has grown to a $1 billion company with offices in four cities, but that personal culture has persisted, Bischoff says.

"I have trusted the leadership of this company through ups and downs," she says. "You have to trust to be trusted - I trust my leaders, and I feel like they trust me."