A Touchdown Career
Tackling Engineering Challenges and Community Outreach
Dante Ferguson joined Gresham Smith’s Building Engineering market as a structural engineer-in-training in 2020. From his home base in the Nashville office, Dante has worked on projects across a variety of markets and locations.
From an early age, Dante had a love for math and a problem-solving mentality. As an adolescent, he also became a fan of video games—particularly Minecraft, where players explore a blocky, three-dimensional world with virtually infinite terrain while discovering and extracting raw materials, crafting tools, and building structures and machinery. The game’s “creative mode” sparked Dante’s curiosity about how structures are built from the ground up and, more importantly, how they stay standing. Admittedly not artistic, Dante knew his strengths would lie in the structural design of buildings, rather than the aesthetic design. By his sophomore year of high school, he had decided that he wanted to pursue a career in engineering.
Dante also had a lifelong love of football. His father was a tight end at Vanderbilt University, and in 2015, Dante followed in his father’s footsteps—moving from his hometown of Atlanta to Nashville. Rather than enroll at Vanderbilt, however, Dante chose to attend Tennessee State University, where he received a combined academic/athletic scholarship. A linebacker on the field and a force in the classroom, Dante majored in civil engineering.
Despite the challenges of shouldering a heavy workload along with a rigorous football schedule, Dante excelled academically— something he attributes largely to motivation, determination and a strong work ethic. By his senior year, he was an expert in time management and self-discipline. His reinforced concrete class took place in the evenings, which often interfered with football practice. His professor noticed that he would walk into class a little late or leave a few minutes early—always wearing his practice gear—but that he never once missed a lecture and continued to earn top grades.
Curious, his professor asked Dante how he was able to balance football with a difficult class schedule. “I live to break stereotypes,” Dante told him. “I want to show that it is possible to do both if that’s what you set your mind on. It will require sacrifice and discipline, but you don’t have to choose one over the other if you’re dedicated to your goal.” The professor, who worked as a vice president in Building Engineering at Gresham Smith, knew that Dante’s maturity and dedication would be an asset to the firm.
Following Dante’s graduation with honors, his professor recruited him into Gresham Smith’s Building Engineering market. In addition to pursuing a career in engineering at the time, Dante was also pursuing a career with the NFL. “I didn’t think of one or the other as my Plan A and Plan B,” he says. “Both paths were my Plan A, and whichever one worked out would be the path that I’d take.” His first and most memorable engineering project was Baptist Health Care’s new Brent Lane Campus, based in Pensacola, Florida, where he worked alongside his former professor and implemented the lessons he had just learned in that professor’s very classroom.
Today, Dante is optimistic about his engineering career at Gresham Smith. He has also been inspired by the opportunities he’s had to explore other passions, including mentorship and community involvement. During his time at the firm, Dante has personally experienced the value that mentorship brings to young professionals.
“Gresham Smith is unique in the sense that there is an eagerness to teach newer employees the ropes, rather than having a ‘sink-or-swim’ mentality,” Dante says. “Everyone here wants to see everyone succeed, and they see it as part of their job to help each other. That doesn’t happen everywhere.” “I hope the experiences that I gain will allow me to become a beacon of hope for others like me.”
Dante has also become an active supporter of Gresham Smith’s Diversity, Equity, Inclusion & Belonging program, particularly when it comes to community outreach. One of his mentors is Mickey Sullivan, who has held several senior leadership positions throughout his 28-year career at the firm. The pair recently served as co-facilitators during a visit to the Nashville office from Café Momentum, an organization that aims to transform young lives by equipping Nashville’s at-risk youth with life skills, education and employment opportunities to help them achieve their full potential. Mickey recognizes Dante’s strong desire to give back to the community.
“Dante knows that being an engineer is his livelihood, and he is clearly invested in his career,” says Mickey. “But I think his true passion lies with making an impact in his community. He is especially drawn to helping troubled youth get on the right path in life. I can tell by the way he genuinely connects with these young people that he wants to be able to make a difference in their lives.”
“All of my life, I knew I never fit into one singular bucket,” says Dante. “I was never ‘just a football player’ or ‘just an engineer’ or ‘just the smart kid.’ I feel that I can extend myself across multiple mediums in a professional and casual setting and, while it took some time for me to realize that, I hope the experiences that I gain will allow me to become a beacon of hope for others like me.”
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