Chris Cormier

CEO, President and Co-owner, Tricorp Group

This story is part of our July 2025 Young Professionals issue, photographed at Bradshaw Animal Shelter. To learn more about adopting at Bradshaw, click here.

It may seem unlikely that a guy who wanted to be a professional drummer would end up finding his life’s calling in construction. But that’s what happened for Chris Cormier, who knew from day one at the Rocklin-based construction firm Tricorp that he wanted to own the place — and now he does.

“I’m a huge advocate for finding a company you like and sticking with it,” says Cormier. While sipping a chai latte during our interview at Panera Bread in Roseville, Cormier, 40, dressed tidily in a black polo shirt with the company logo, shares how he worked his way up from intern to his current position as president, CEO and co-owner of Tricorp Group.

Hard work may be the key to every success story, but as Cormier points out, it’s also about following your gut. After starting as a music major at Sac State, he realized it wasn’t his path and migrated out. When opportunity knocked in the form of a laborer job, working on the El Dorado Hills property of Ken Roebbelen (of Roebbelen Construction), Cormier jumped at the chance. The hours were custom-made for a college kid — Saturdays during the school year and daily in summer — and it was there that he learned the trade. “I learned how to run equipment, did carpentry and drywall, concrete, a little bit of electrical, all that stuff,” says Cormier.

“I’m a huge advocate for finding a company you like and sticking with it.”

He switched his major to construction management, ultimately graduating with a bachelor’s degree. In 2007, while still in school, he began interning at Tricorp. “After my first week there, I told Ken that I wanted to own this company,” remembers Cormier. “And he said, ‘Good luck.’”

A series of promotions followed, from intern to project engineer to project manager to director of operations. When Cormier heard that Tricorp founder and then-owner Tony Moayed was planning to retire, he voiced his interest in becoming the next owner. The buyout “took years,” he says, but in 2020, Cormier and his two partners, Ryan Smith and Matt Carota, sealed the deal. “Tony took me under his wing and made this possible,” says Cormier. He credits both Moayed and Roebbelen as his primary mentors.

With Carota running the accounting side (he’s vice president and CFO) and Smith as vice president of estimating and preconstruction, Cormier presides over operations, a job encompassing everything from securing multimillion-dollar contracts to HR functions. “I’m in charge of hiring, terminations, promotions and training, including interns,” he says. Under Cormier’s leadership, employee retention has improved by more than 50 percent, a statistic he attributes in part to “open communication and transparency.” He adds, “There’s also that cliche about a business being like a family, but I think we really are very family-oriented with our employees.” Among its many awards, Tricorp has thrice been honored as one of the region’s Best Places to Work.

Though Tricorp’s portfolio is diverse, ranging from multifamily real estate to public works, its mainstay is apartments and hotels, says Cormier, whose first project as operations director was the Hyatt Place in Vacaville. He singles out the 160-unit Marina Village affordable housing project in Suisun City as “one of our biggest. We were running about 120 guys on this job because we’re not just a contractor; we’re a builder.”

A Redding native, Cormier now makes his home in Auburn with wife Jillian, sons Rowan and Harrison (11 and 7) and a goldendoodle named Winnie. He’s in the office most days, he says, but he also spends a lot of time on the road, visiting Tricorp job sites all over Northern California.

Does he still play the drums? Not really, though he does bang around on his kids’ electronic drum set from time to time. His favorite hobby is an extension of work: home remodeling. “I’m addicted to it,” confesses Cormier. “It’s a weird combination of a source of stress and also what I do to relieve stress.”

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