Meet JD,

JD Garay is Chief Executive Officer of J.D. Glass, Inc., where he sets the company's strategy and directs its preconstruction, estimating, finance, and growth. Under his leadership the company has expanded from a single Downey shop to two Southern California operations and moved beyond its retail tenant-improvement base into DSA education, HCAI healthcare, federal, and public-works markets as a self-performing Division 8 contractor.

JD has been a glazier since he was sixteen. Through college he came home on weekends to work alongside his father in the family glazing business, paying his way through school in the field. After graduating, he took a project management position with another construction firm to build working capital for J.D. Glass, running two full-time roles at once until the company could stand on its own. He grew it on his own equity, without outside investors.

J.D. Glass is where JD started and where he spends his days, but it is one of three operating companies he leads, all active. JD Golden Investments and JDG Property Management extend that same discipline into real estate, and inform how J.D. Glass prices, plans, and delivers for the owners it builds for.

He brings an unusually broad academic foundation to the trade. He graduated at the top of his class from the University of California, Santa Barbara, with a double major in Political Science, with an emphasis in American politics, and Public Policy, while completing the university's Technology Management Program certificate and serving as president of the honor society. He went on to earn a Construction Management certificate from UCLA, awarded with distinction, and a Project Management certificate from Cornell University, again finishing at the top of his class. He holds an MBA in Corporate Finance from the UC Davis Graduate School of Management, where he graduated at the top of his class.

On weekends, JD tutors students in math.