Legacy Engineers is a Mechanical, Electrical, Plumbing and Fire Protection (MEP/FP) consulting engineering firm. We provide our clients engineering excellence, and innovative, sustainable solutions for the built environment. We are a majority Black-owned, best-in-class, Minority Business Enterprise (MBE-Black) firm, with a mission to be a national firm, that champions Black and other under-represented minorities & women in engineering leadership positions. We will use diversity and excellence as our competitive advantages to spur creativity and innovation to solve our clients most complex challenges.
Legacy Engineers fills a vital void in the marketplace; the demand for engineers in America is at an all-time high while the graduation rate of new engineers is declining, and Blacks and other minorities are under-represented in the field. Our vision is for Legacy Engineers to be a ‘brand name’ in engineering that is passed down to future generations and changes the face of engineering. We envision a day when the leadership in our industry will be more reflective of our communities.
Our Story:
In 2015, John Rice, a partner in one of the major consulting engineering firms in New York City, noticed that engineering firms in the A/E/C industry were rarely promoting black, indigenous, or people-of-color (BIPOC) to leadership positions. After continuously hearing clients request MBE participation on projects, he began developing a business plan to create a new engineering firm that would be majority Black-owned, diverse, respond to the demand in the marketplace for a best-in-class MBE firm and with a mission to promote more Blacks in engineering. Initially, when he presented it to some of his younger colleagues whose careers he felt deserved better recognition, the idea was met with hesitancy since they were in good positions and daunted by the heavy lift of starting up a new firm. It was a chance encounter that changed all of that!
In 2016, John Rice and Cheryl McKissack-Daniel met by happenstance at NYC’s Jazz at Lincoln Center. Unknown to each other at the time, Cheryl – the granddaughter of the first Black registered architects in the country, and the owner of McKissack & McKissack, the oldest black-owned construction company in the US – wanted to form a professional corporation to pursue other procurements, such as design-build; and John had a business plan to start a Black-owned engineering firm. They found their goals aligned! After agreeing on a framework, John went back to his colleagues with the news, and it was a Go! Stephen Fuller and Kiron Bowman, Legacy’s Co-Founders, joined John & Cheryl in completing the strategic plan for the firm.
Legacy Engineers was launched in 2019 by Founding Principals @JohnRice, President, and Cheryl McKissack-Daniel. Since our launch, Legacy has worked on some of the largest and most prestigious projects in the industry and has established itself as a firm that provides exceptional engineering services to our clients. And as a model of Black-entrepreneurship, Legacy is developing the next generation of engineering leaders and plans to pass the firm’s ownership down to future generations, to continue … Building on a Legacy.