Jon Stojan
Image credit: iStock
A Harvard alum and former elite athlete for Team Canada, Karly Heffernan spent years leading commercial strategy and growth at a construction firm, where she scaled a new division over 3 years. It was the inefficiencies buried in day-to-day operations—especially around communication—that grabbed her attention. Heffernan is a trailblazer in a male-dominated industry and utilizes her unique background to approach ConTech (construction technology).
From Ice Rinks to Construction Sites
Born in Alberta, Canada, Heffernan spent her childhood competing on the boys hockey team. By the age of 15, she was featured on TSN as Powerade’s Top 24 athletes and went on to represent Canada, winning 3 gold medals. Her passion and drive for the sport of hockey naturally transferred in her working career.
“I grew up chasing the Olympic dream – construction or technology was never on my radar” Heffernan says.
As someone trained in both economics and sociology at Harvard, Heffernan recognized a unique opportunity to combine social behavior with systems thinking—specifically, through the use of AI.
After graduating and having worked in PropTech, she began experimenting with how AI tools could bring structure to unstructured processes in construction. She helped implement early AI-backed workflows within the construction firm’s commercial division, including:
- Automating lead qualification and intake through natural language processing
- Using machine transcription to extract takeaways from internal calls
- Streamlining repetitive documentation tasks through predictive text and document generation tools
The results were clear: faster handoffs, fewer dropped details, and better alignment across field and office teams.
“It wasn’t about replacing people—it was about creating visibility and giving time back to the field teams. It allows stakeholders to make smarter decisions faster,” Heffernan explains.
Image credit: Karly Heffernan
The AI Play in Construction
“In construction, so much of the work happens in conversation—in the field, through quick decisions that never get tracked,” says Heffernan. “There’s such a cost to that including rework, delays, legal disputes. It’s invisible on the surface, but it’s eating into margins and time everywhere.”
While AI has made major inroads in industries like finance, logistics, and healthcare, construction has been slower to adapt—due to both cultural and operational barriers. But that’s beginning to shift. Right now fewer than 5% of construction companies use AI for day-to-day jobsite operations, according to McKinsey.
“Construction is ready for AI,” Heffernan says. “There’s growing awareness that automation doesn’t mean less control—it means better control. It means capturing the stuff that slips through the cracks.”
She’s currently researching emerging AI use cases in ConTech and rethinking how the industry manages communication, documentation, and field-to-office workflows.
Rather than pushing a single product or platform, Heffernan is focused on advancing AI literacy and readiness in construction—helping firms rethink the systems they rely on, and asking smarter questions about what’s possible.
“The problems are clear,” she says. “The question now is who’s going to solve them—and how fast we can get the right tools into the hands of the people who actually build.”
Image credit: Karly Heffernan
Roles in Leadership
As a woman in a blue-collar industry, a ConTech leader and visionary, Heffernan wants to empower other women and men in the field.. She’s not afraid to challenge norms as she bridges two worlds – blue-collar and tech. Her leadership style centers on people and perspective, and leads growth in her industry.
Looking forward, Heffernan wants to focus on innovations that impact the world, with special attention to ventures in overlooked or underserved industries.