Peggy Del Fabbro became the CEO of M. Davis & Sons in 2008.
Peggy Del Fabbro says her biggest challenge isn’t being a woman in a male-dominated field; it’s continuing – and building on – the legacy of a 150-year-old family-owned business.
“I always felt the need to prove myself, both internally and externally,” said Del Fabbro, CEO of M. Davis & Sons, Inc., an industrial construction, fabrication, and maintenance company founded in Newark in 1870.
Del Fabbro said nothing was handed to her; she had to earn everything and work her way up the ranks of the company, a reflection of her family’s culture.
A graduate of Brandywine High School, she was originally inspired to be a veterinarian by Dr. Jan Pol (also known as Nat Geo Wild’s The Incredible Dr. Pol) but joked that she ran into a brick wall for those aspirations when it came to learning chemistry.
But she always had a passion for business.
“If you look back in history, I think it was in the 70s when women could finally get credit in their own name, so it was definitely a different time, and that’s dramatically changed since then,” she said.
Women could legally apply for credit cards on their own in 1974 after the passage of the Equal Credit Opportunity Act.
She started working in the business in junior high.
Peggy Del Fabbro
“I found that I enjoyed helping with the bookkeeping in our business, so I decided to get a business administration degree from UD, just because that was a degree that would give me exposure to a wide range of different things like finance, accounting, economics, marketing,” Del Fabbro said.
Being a 154-year-old company, she said they’ve experienced and overcome many ups and downs.
“Although the pandemic was unique, we relied on our knowledge and data from the previous economic downturns,” she said. “This data and experience guided our leadership team well during a difficult and challenging time.”
The pandemic proved to be a difficult season for supply chain issues in all industries, she said.
“Due to our supplier diversity program, we were able to navigate the supply chain because we had grown a diverse group of suppliers,” she said. “Being creative in our sourcing and being honest with our customers about the challenges we were all facing and were well documented, proved to be the best course of action.”
When she graduated college, she decided to work elsewhere because she had never worked anywhere else other than M. Davis & Sons, so she spent four years as an accountant at NVF Company in Yorklyn before returning to the family business in 1987.
She took over as the CEO in 2008.
A big challenge she’s faced is the lack of people entering the field.
“We need to get people interested in careers in construction, and I think that the tide is slowly turning,” she said. “More women are getting into engineering and in the trades and that’s really important to have that diversity of people who are interested.”
It’s important to reach children before high school, she said.
“Especially in Delaware, we do have the Vo-Tech schools and, to me, kids at a young age need to think about what their career might be,” she said, “so I think it’s important that kids are exposed to different things in middle school so they know what’s available to them, so they can make a good decision as far as what high schools they are going to go to.”
Del Fabbro is inspired by the work her company does and by how M. Davis & Sons supports its customers in their ventures.
“We work in a wide variety of markets, so it’s really neat to see how things are made,” she said. “I like to get out in the field and get on job sites and see what we’re doing, what challenges my people might face, what our customers, what their challenges are. That motivates me.”
She’s also motivated by the fact that her company’s work helps provide a livelihood and career for people to support their families.
The business has several members of a number of families working there, so it is truly a family endeavor.
It has 460 full-time employees, making it Delaware’s largest women-owned business. It’s also the largest HVAC & plumbing company in the state.
For the last 15 years, M. Davis & Sons has been certified by WBENC (Women’s Business Enterprise National Council), which certifies more than 20,0000 women-owned businesses in the United States.
“Being able to network with other women business owners has been really important in my leadership journey,” Del Fabbro said.
She said there are probably more women-owned businesses than people realize.
While the number is growing, 39% of businesses in America are women-owned, according to Wells Fargo. But in the construction field, just about 10% of the construction field is made up of women, according to the National Association of Women in Construction.
The mean annual salary for plumbers and pipefitters is $68,250, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
“My advice to women in the construction field would be to not limit yourself,” Del Fabbro said. “There are many excellent opportunities in all areas of construction. Apprenticeships in construction are accessible and create an avenue toward increased wages and upon graduation, a well-earned Journeyman Certificate.”
When she isn’t running M. Davis, she enjoys spending time with her husband and two sons.
Oh – and don’t mess with her. She is a third-degree black belt in Tang Soo Do Karate.
“It’s a great stress reliever, good exercise, and I call it a ‘life sport’ because I didn’t start that until I was in my mid-to-late 40s,” she said. “My kids were doing it, and they kept bugging me, and so I tried it out. It’s definitely great camaraderie, and there’s many other adults and people of all ages that participate.”
Raised in Doylestown, Pennsylvania, Jarek earned a B.A. in journalism and a B.A. in political science from Temple University in 2021. After running CNN’s Michael Smerconish’s YouTube channel, Jarek became a reporter for the Bucks County Herald before joining Delaware LIVE News.
