Nicole Padgett is a strategic advisor to the President and Executive Vice President of Summit Contracting Group, and she oversees and provides daily direction to the Chief Administrative Officer and Chief Financial Officer on all corporate activity and financial planning.

Summit has a unique advantage with Nicole Padgett’s experience in the industry – she understands how one department’s procedural change will affect another. Her insight helps bridge the gap between departments and ensures all team members can work efficiently and effectively.

Having worked her way through virtually every department in the industry over the past two decades, Nicole is able to utilize her vast wealth of knowledge to guide the overall direction and success of the company through carefully executed strategic planning and decision making.

Nicole has created the company’s procedures and corporate structure that is in use today and continues to guide the team she has built around her to improve every aspect of the company’s operations. Nicole has selected, trained, and promoted each department leader on the corporate side of the business and works with company leadership to make decisions on the hiring, advancing, and placing of construction personnel.

Nicole is passionate about the company’s risk mitigation programs and constantly works to eliminate potential liabilities and keep the company and its employees safe. The multifamily industry is ever-evolving – which makes the safety and success of a project reliant on the trusted relationships with Summit’s field leadership and our valued subcontractors.

Nicole Padgett is the driving force of Summit’s community involvement and has developed a focused vision for the company’s philanthropic initiatives. Her sensibility and genuine passion for positively influencing the cities we live and work in, especially Jacksonville, has led Summit to support several non-profit organizations over the years that have significantly impacted their communities.

Nicole is also dedicated to serving the City of Jacksonville, FL. She served as the Chair of the Jacksonville Planning Commission and was appointed in 2019 to sit on the advisory board for Jacksonville Transit Authority.

Nicole continues to donate as much of her time, wisdom and personal resources as possible, to help improve our community.

“Multifamily development is one of the key elements that has ignited and enabled our city’s recent growth, and with continued support, one that promises to keep Jacksonville in those top rankings for livability.”

Promotion from Within

Nicole Padgett’s career path at Summit has been a quintessential example of the great things that can happen when companies recognize potential in team members and promote from within.

Nicole quickly excelled in the administrative realm. She showed great proficiency for keeping up with RFIs, ASIs, submittals, and the litany of documentation required for administrating complex construction projects.

Soon thereafter, she was recruited to join the accounting team at Summit and demonstrated her ability to handle the constant juggling and long hours that come with managing the accounting tasks on multiple construction projects, simultaneously.

Rising Through the Ranks of Corporate Services

Summit had the foresight to further promote Nicole into leadership in Corporate Services. In this role, Nicole continued to develop into the key team member she is today by managing all aspects of human resources, technology, insurance, and licensing sectors for the company.

As a General Contractor working in many states simultaneously with hundreds of employees, navigating the diverse licensing, insurance, employment and legal requirements is a crucial and often challenging responsibility. Nicole stepped up to the task, excelling in every area she touched.

Leading into 2009 during the toughest days of the recession, Summit asked Nicole to head up an overhaul and revamping of Summit’s corporate marketing strategy. Through the integration and creative use of both traditional marketing tools and new digital marketing technologies, Nicole kept Summit’s customer base loyal and growing through the worst recession the building industry has ever seen.

In 2010, Nicole was promoted once again to the position of Chief Administrative Officer (CAO) where her knowledge of every facet of the company made her a perfect choice for this extremely demanding and ever evolving position. In her current role, Nicole oversees the roles and processes of the administrative, accounting, human resources, and marketing departments, through which she rose.