In our member spotlight, Duncan Robertson, CPSM, recently sat down for a virtual chat with SMPS. Duncan, who’s director of business development and marketing at Tamarack Grove Engineering. In this spotlight, he shares how SMPS has helped his career, as well as his favorite part of the job.
How long have you worked in the A/E/C industry? I recently celebrated six years in the industry.
How long have you been an SMPS member? I joined SMPS just six months into my career, so I’ve been a member now for about five and a half years.
Please share some recent professional-related news that you’re proud of. I recently had the opportunity to present for the first time at not one, but two SMPS regional conferences: SERC and SWRC. I thoroughly enjoyed presenting to my marketing and BD peers from across the country and sharing my knowledge and experience building a sustainable social media strategy. In relation to work, our firm opened two new offices in 2024, and I have enjoyed being part of the leadership team, the growth strategy, and the branding efforts as we expand our physical presence across North America.
What’s your favorite part of the job? My favorite thing has always been working with and learning from others. I love that I get to tell stories and share expertise for the incredible technical professionals I’m surrounded by each day. I love that I also get to connect with new people across the country to learn more about their work and share about what we do at Tamarack Grove Engineering.
What has been one of your most meaningful projects? In the last six years, I’ve gotten to be part of many meaningful projects at Tamarack Grove. The most meaningful and memorable was creating a charity sporting clay tournament from the ground up. My team took the lead in 2024 with hosting a clay shoot that benefitted two local nonprofit organizations. We planned all aspects of the event, recruited sponsorships, donations, and participants.
We ended up raising nearly $20,000 for the two nonprofits and hosted over 160 participants and volunteers. We’ve since decided to make it a biennial event, hosting it every other year and rotating through various nonprofits to reach a wide array of needs in our community.
What’s the best advice you’ve received regarding your career? Someone told me early on in my career that there is always someone in the room who knows more than you do. That made me enter each meeting, conversation, and event with a humble heart and mind. There are so many industry veterans who have paved the path that I am now walking on, and it encourages me to ask questions along the way and leave a trail behind me for the next generation of business development and marketing professionals.
Why is SMPS membership important to you and how has it helped you and your firm? This could be an entire article so I’ll keep it brief, but I attribute my career only six years in to my involvement with SMPS. My SMPS membership and work anniversary are only six months apart, so they’ve been intertwined basically from the start. SMPS gave me a community when I was a one-person marketing and BD team for the first five years of my career. I didn’t have marketing mentors to bounce questions off of, or others to share my experience with since it was just me at TGE.
SMPS provided a group of like-minded individuals who I could collaborate with, learn from, and also learn personal skills about leadership and relationship-building. That’s been the greatest benefit to my firm, because we’ve been able to build genuine relationships with people across the country who are doing similar work as us.
The leadership lessons I’ve learned because of my opportunity to be a founding member of SMPS Idaho and serve as the chapter’s first president have allowed me to get a seat at the leadership table within my firm. I now meet weekly with the other leaders at TGE to strategically move the company forward, and I wouldn’t have had those leadership lessons without the opportunity to lead my fellow board and chapter members in SMPS Idaho.
As a CPSM, how has certification benefited you? Becoming a CPSM in 2023 was an exciting step in my career as I didn’t go to school specifically for marketing, so this was an opportunity to invest in education for my career path. Up to that point, I had learned a lot by just working on projects for my firm, but this leveled up my knowledge and expanded my thinking beyond my role as a marketer. It introduced me to research, BD principles, and design in a way that I had never heard of. Since becoming a CPSM I’ve been able to create presentations to share my experience and knowledge with other industry professionals and have been able to mentor others through the study process and encourage them to take the next step.
Last year you were nominated as SMPS Emerging Leader of the Year. Congrats! Can you share what the award means to you? I was blown away when I was informed that I won the first Emerging Leader of the Year award. It was an honor and certainly not expected. It means so much to me from a variety of perspectives. First, it showed me how much support I have from my family and colleagues. It took a lot to submit for that award, and many people took time to write and say kind things about me, so it was humbling to say the least. Second, it showed how much value my firm and leadership have in me and the importance of marketing and BD in our industry.
There are a lot of people in our industry who are rockstars at what they do, and to be named an emerging leader by just doing what I thought I should be doing showed that I’ve had incredible opportunities to learn and grow to start out my career. I hope to be able to provide that to those who are coming up as young professionals in marketing and business development.
How would you define an emerging leader and what’s next for you in terms of your career? I teach a relational leadership course at Boise State University, and every semester I tell the students that everyone is a leader. I would define an emerging leader as someone who takes initiative, thinks outside the box, and makes significant contributions to their firm. I believe it takes the next generation of leaders to push the norms and it’ll be those who help firms grow strategically. I think crossing the five-year mark and being named an emerging leader started a new chapter in my career. What started out as a role focused on brand awareness has snowballed into being in charge of all marketing and business development efforts at Tamarack Grove.
This new chapter in my career is focused on how I can help our firm grow strategically, with marketing and BD at the core of the growth. Marketing and BD touch all aspects of business, from recruiting and retention to client satisfaction and new work, and I plan to be an integral part of our growth as we continue to scale. I also have a goal to speak and provide more thought leadership to various publications, including Marketer journal, to share my experience and knowledge up to this point in my young career.
Tell us something we’d be surprised to learn about you. I’m an identical twin! We were born six minutes apart and are best friends. We graduated college together and now we’re coworkers, where he oversees our finances as the director of finance and I get to work hand in hand with him as our director of BD and marketing.
What’s on your bucket list? I am on a mission, however long it takes, to visit all 50 of the United States! I am almost halfway there and just love seeing how unique our beautiful country is from coast to coast.
Guilty pleasure: What can you not live without? It might come from a lifelong nickname, Duncan Donuts, but I love a great donut, specifically maple bars. There’s something to be said about a fresh, mouthwatering donut and it’s my weakness!
