Josh Fenske

Josh grew up on job sites. His father was a home builder, and long before he knew the words for load paths or lateral systems, he understood that enduring buildings were made by people who cared about getting it right. That early instinct has defined the seventeen years he has spent practicing structural engineering.

After earning a Bachelor of Science in Architectural Engineering from Milwaukee School of Engineering in 2009, Josh moved through a series of firms that each sharpened a different edge. Early work at 20/10 Engineering and Ramaker built his foundation in commercial and institutional structures. A stint at Pierce Engineers deepened his fluency with complex systems. Later roles at Strategic and, most recently, Mead & Hunt expanded his scope to include FAA-regulated facilities, Department of Defense military projects, and seismic evaluations — work that rewards precision above all else.

Today he holds professional engineering licensure in eighteen states and structural engineering licensure in three, and carries the NCEES Model Law Structural Engineer designation. But the credential he talks about more freely is the one that isn't printed on anything: the habit of intellectual honesty. He has spent his career learning to surface problems early, to say "I don't know" before it becomes "I should have said something," and to treat every project as an opportunity to do better than the last one. He has always believed that vulnerability in a professional context is not weakness — it's the fastest path to trust.

Within a team, Josh gravitates toward the steady, load-bearing work — the kind that doesn't make the headline but makes the headline possible. He is the person teams lean on: the calm voice when pressure builds, the one who slows the room down long enough to ask the question nobody else thought to ask, who researches the method before committing to it, and who keeps a project from drifting off course. He has brought that orientation to tools as varied as cross-laminated timber detailing and new structural software — not because new tools are exciting for their own sake, but because the right tool, properly understood, produces better outcomes for the engineers, designers, and everyone who depends on the building — from the first drawing to the last day it stands.

That same disposition has pulled him steadily into a second current running alongside his engineering practice: building things with software. Exploring AI and the systems that can reason, act, and adapt on their own has become a genuine hobby and a growing area of craft. He approaches it the same way he approaches a new structural system: read deeply, build something real, and stay honest about what he doesn't know yet.

The through-line is curiosity. It is what compels him to keep growing beyond the edges of any single project — pushing into new disciplines, reaching toward unfamiliar methods, and adding new branches of knowledge even as old ones break and leaves fall away. The tree keeps growing. Passion. Curiosity. Honesty. Three words he returns to when asked what drives him — and three words that describe not just how he has worked, but the blueprint for everything he is building next.