Lauren Frugé: Leading with Values and Purpose

Lauren Frugé spent her career turning a lifelong passion for environmental stewardship into action. Today, as regional director of McKinstry Technical Services, she leads McKinstry teams across the Pacific Northwest, helping building owners improve performance, reduce energy use and make informed decisions about their facilities.

Long before she started helping clients improve buildings, Lauren was looking for ways to make a positive impact on the world around her.

“Looking back, I wanted to help save the planet from a very young age,” Lauren said.

In her childhood, Lauren spent time living on a Caribbean island and attended environmental summer camps. In college, she studied abroad doing marine research in east Africa. Through these experiences, she developed a drive to be part of the solutions to the problems she sees.

“I studied coral bleaching firsthand and saw the impacts of rising ocean temperatures and acidification,” said Lauren. “I really care about what we’re doing to our planet.”

As she finished her senior year at Washington State University, Lauren knew she wanted to build a career where she could thrive as an environmentalist. After accepting an environmental consulting internship at McKinstry, she quickly discovered a passion for the built environment. Realizing its potential to drive positive change made the work even more fulfilling and reinforced her desire to pursue the field.

“It’s almost funny that I didn’t think of a path in the built environment before. By random chance, I fell into a role at McKinstry, but it feels like it was a natural alignment,” Lauren reflected.

As Lauren explained, she’s come to learn that a passion for the built environment is vital for a role on her team. One of the first questions she asks when interviewing potential teammates: do you like talking about buildings?

“Many of our clients are facility operators, facility directors and custodians. They’re people who really care about and are intimately connected to their buildings,” she explained. “So, if you don’t care about buildings as much as they do, it’s going to be challenging to build rapport because we are there to supplement them and help them make their operations more efficient.” 

Helping Clients Do the Best They Can With What They Have

Her passion for the built environment and its potential to benefit clients, communities and the environment guided Lauren throughout her 17-year career at McKinstry. She describes Technical Services’ work as an ongoing partnership that begins with assessing a client’s needs and resources and continues through service, long-range planning and support during and between capital improvement projects.

“We are helping building owners solve problems,” said Lauren. “We’re helping them do the best they can with what they have.”

Early on, prior to managing teams, Lauren especially loved working directly with and helping public schools where money can be scarce, but needs are great.

“Schools often don’t have a lot of money at any given point to just upgrade all their buildings all the time,” said Lauren. “But utility rates are going up, community use is going up, buildings are getting older and it’s costing a lot to run them. So Technical Services will run projects like existing building commissioning, which is kind of like tuning up your car to identify issues and make it work the way it’s supposed to.”

When clients receive funding for capital projects, she says, McKinstry’s Energy or SPG teams step in to execute the work, while Technical Services continues supporting those facilities in the background through system maintenance and operational improvements.

“I am proud that we are helping part of the Earth system that really needs attention,” Lauren explains. “There are so many buildings that are using so much energy and have operational challenges. I look at existing building stock and see so much opportunity to conserve energy, reduce emissions, save money and plan the future with our clients.”

Leading with Values

In her role managing a team spanning Western Washington, Oregon and the Inland Northwest, and running more than 450 projects at any one time, Lauren’s care for clients extends to the people she manages.

“I feel empowered to show up on behalf of my people here, which aligns with my values,” said Lauren. “I don’t think I would necessarily have that kind of institutional support at another organization.”

McKinstry’s value to Build Trusted Partnerships aligns closely with Lauren’s role as a leader. Establishing trust is something she strives to do every day, whether with clients, in the community or among teammates. It is also an area she has invested in intentionally throughout her career, including earning her MBA more than a decade ago to broaden her business perspective and strengthen her leadership capabilities.

“Early in my career, I built great rapport with the clients I was working with. We cared about each other as people and we wanted everybody to succeed,” said Lauren. “Now that I’m in a more internal leadership position, I place a lot of emphasis on building trust and strong peer networks within my team. No one person has all the answers. When there’s trust in a team, people are comfortable asking questions and working collaboratively. That’s also what really creates that strong team fabric that keeps people together through ups and downs.”

Finding Balance

Rooted in her values and passions, Lauren is a wife, mother of two, avid gardener, surfer and seaglass artist who embraces fulfillment both inside and outside of work. She sees success in her career as an important part of a well-rounded life. She wants the same balance for her team.

“I really value showing up well at work and showing up well at home,” she says. “That’s how I manage, that’s how I lead and McKinstry has room for that.”

Reflecting on her career, one word comes to mind again and again: proud.

“I feel like we’re doing good work for the world, and I’m very proud of that,” she says. “At the end of my career, whenever that is, I will be able to look back and say that I made an impact with the time I was working.”