Leadership may be cultivated long before one earns a title or establishes a company. For Carly Puleo, her experience as a leader came through the process of learning in the classroom environment, where she realized that the true way of making a difference is by helping people trust in themselves. These early learnings about the importance of patience, communication, and empathy served as the core values of her future entrepreneurship.
As the Business Owner at Carja Construction Inc., Puleo has completed several projects with success. Integrity, service, and the conviction that leadership is judged by the lives it impacts are the cornerstones of her legacy. She continues to show that bravery, empathy, and meaningful action are the keys to long-term success, whether she is changing skylines, supporting women in business, promoting drowning prevention, or giving back to her community.
A Teacher at Heart
Puleo earned a degree in Elementary Education from the University of South Florida and taught for five years. The classroom gave her more than her first profession; it gave her the leadership foundation she would later bring into business.
“Teaching taught me patience, communication, preparation, and the importance of helping people believe in themselves,” she says.
Those lessons remain central to the way she works. Puleo believes effective leaders do not need to dominate every conversation or pretend to have every answer. Instead, they create the conditions in which others feel capable, supported, and motivated to grow.
The transition from education to construction was neither obvious nor easy. As a single mother raising three children, Puleo felt a strong responsibility to create a secure future for her family. A conversation with one of her students’ mothers helped bring a new possibility into focus. Familiar with Puleo’s construction background, the woman spoke about the need for legitimate women- and minority-owned businesses in the industry. The idea stayed with Puleo, who began to see how her experience, determination, and desire to create opportunity could come together in a new venture.
She founded Carja Construction Inc. in 2012. Leaving the classroom was a significant risk, but she did not abandon the values that had guided her there. She carried them into an industry that demanded quick learning, perseverance, and the confidence to lead in rooms where few expected to see a woman in charge.
Building Carja from the Ground Up
Carja’s early opportunity to pour concrete for Julian B. Lane Park and its Visitor Center became a defining moment. The project gave the young company a foundation and demonstrated what could grow from one opportunity approached with gratitude, discipline, and follow-through.
The road was not without resistance. Puleo had to establish credibility in a traditionally male-dominated field, often working harder to be heard and taken seriously. Her father, Ross, and her brother, Anthony, helped guide her through the business step by step, while Puleo developed her own leadership voice.
She learned to pair confidence with preparation and to let consistent performance speak louder than assumptions. “In a traditionally male-dominated field, credibility is built day by day through consistency, professionalism, and results,” she says.
Rather than allowing difficult encounters to make her defensive, Puleo used them to sharpen her focus. She wanted Carja’s growth to demonstrate possibility rather than resentment. “I believe leadership is not only about proving people wrong; it is about proving what is possible,” she says.
Integrity, accountability, respect, and a solution-oriented mindset guide her decisions. She expects high standards, but she also wants clients, colleagues, and emerging business owners to feel that leadership is accessible. For Puleo, confidence is most effective when it creates connection rather than distance.
Constructing Places That Matter
Carja Construction has gone on to contribute to projects connected to some of the region’s most recognized organizations, including the University of South Florida, the University of Tampa, the University of Central Florida (UCF), Johns Hopkins All Children’s Hospital, Moffitt Cancer Center, Universal Studios, Midtown, Tampa International Airport, and the Water Street Tampa development.
Julian B. Lane Park remains especially meaningful because it opened the door to what followed. Projects tied to USF carry another personal connection: the university is where Puleo’s own professional journey began. Seeing her company contribute to spaces where students learn brings her years in education and construction together in a tangible way.
Work associated with Johns Hopkins All Children’s Hospital and Moffitt Cancer Center holds a different significance. These are places where families seek care, answers, and hope. For Puleo, that human context makes the work more than a commercial assignment.
“Construction is never just concrete. It becomes part of a larger experience and a larger community,” she says.
That perspective also shapes her definition of innovation. It is not innovation for its own sake, but the practical discipline of working better, safer, and smarter while respecting the people who will ultimately use a space. Each organization that chooses Carja places trust in the company, and Puleo treats that trust as both an honor and a responsibility to keep improving.
Turning Loss into Prevention
Puleo’s understanding of resilience extends far beyond business. In 2020, she survived a drowning incident at Siesta Key while trying to save her husband. She survived; he did not. The loss changed her understanding of time, grief, and the importance of living with purpose.
Long before the accident, Puleo had earned her Infant Swimming Resource certification. Afterward, drowning prevention became even more personal. Teaching survival skills to babies as young as six months allowed her love of education and her commitment to protecting families to meet in one mission.
“Education, prevention, and awareness can truly save lives. It saved me,” she says.
The experience also changed how Puleo leads. It deepened her awareness that people often carry private burdens into the workplace and every other room they enter. A leader may never know the full story, but can still choose patience, empathy, and grace. In Puleo’s view, results matter, but so does how people are treated while working toward them.
She does not define resilience as denying pain or appearing untouched by hardship. For her, it is the choice to acknowledge loss, accept support, and continue loving, serving, and building. By teaching drowning prevention, Puleo has found a practical way to transform pain into protection—one child and one family at a time.
Giving Back to the Community That Raised Her
As a Tampa native, Puleo sees community service as an extension of leadership rather than a separate obligation. Tampa Bay shaped her family, education, and business, and she believes success carries a responsibility to help others move forward.
Her involvement spans organizations serving children, women, veterans, animals, education, and healthcare. She has supported GiGi’s Playhouse, Girl Scouts Camp CEO, the Humane Society Fashion Show, St. Joseph’s Heroes Ball, Carrollwood Day School’s Annual Giving Committee, Corso’s for Heroes, the Children’s Dream Foundation with the Tampa Bay Rays, and St. Joseph’s Women’s Hospital Foundation.
Her work with the hospital foundation is especially personal. Puleo’s mother survived ovarian cancer, giving her a firsthand understanding of what excellent treatment can mean for a woman and her family. Supporting fundraising for medical resources and helping bring people together through the foundation’s fashion show with Dillard’s allows Puleo to contribute to care that can give other families more time together.
She measures success not only by completed projects, but by whether her time, experience, or resources help someone feel seen, reach a goal, or believe in a better future. “Success means more when it becomes a bridge for someone else,” she says.
Making Leadership Visible
Puleo’s commitment to community is closely connected to her desire to empower women. Through the National Association of Women in Construction (Tampa Chapter 36), the National Association of Women Business Owners, the Tampa Bay Chamber, Girl Scouts Camp CEO, and other organizations, she has learned from women willing to share their experiences and has tried to offer that same openness in return. In 2026, the organization named her a Woman to Admire in its magazine.
Those relationships have shown her “how much alike we all are”—in the responsibilities women carry, the doubts they overcome, and the hopes they hold for the next generation.
Puleo believes representation can make leadership feel attainable. When a young woman sees another woman leading a company, serving on a board, mentoring others, and remaining connected to her community, she can more easily imagine herself doing the same. Women need a consistent presence in rooms where consequential decisions are made, Puleo believes—not merely to occupy seats, but to contribute insight and a fuller understanding of the people those decisions affect.
That conviction also informs her public service. Appointed by the Mayor of Tampa to serve on the Equal Business Opportunity Committee (EBOC), Puleo advocates for local laws that protect small business owners. The Mayor has since reappointed her to the committee for a second time, extending her service through the 2027 term.
“We can be ambitious without losing our hearts for service. If a young woman sees my journey and believes she can build her own path, that is a legacy worth creating,” she says.
Her goal is not to make leadership look effortless. It is to make the path visible, honest, and possible. Puleo’s confidence is grounded rather than performative; it allows room for listening, collaboration, and the acknowledgment that no one builds a meaningful life alone.
Her Proudest Achievement
For all of Puleo’s professional and community accomplishments, the role that matters most to her is motherhood. She raised her three children as a single mother, supported by what she describes as a small but powerful family. She calls her children “my greatest motivation and my proudest achievement.”
Her daughter graduated with an International Baccalaureate degree with honors and is studying to become a Physician Assistant at the University of South Florida. Her older son became a project manager for a commercial concrete company at 19. Her younger son is a student who excels at Carrollwood Day School. Their achievements belong to them, but watching their discipline, compassion, and independence develop has been one of the greatest rewards of Puleo’s life.
She does not present the balance among business, teaching, service, and parenting as effortless. Instead, she returns to the purpose that connects them. Carja Construction, drowning-prevention education, philanthropy, and motherhood all reflect a desire to help people feel safer, stronger, and more capable.
Puleo has also learned that strength does not require carrying everything alone. She gives herself grace, accepts help, and recognizes that rest is necessary to remain present for the people and work she loves. Gratitude keeps her grounded through both adversity and achievement.
From a Tampa classroom to construction sites across the region, and from profound loss to a mission of prevention, Carly Puleo has turned each chapter of her life into a foundation for the next. Her story suggests that confidence need not be loud, strength need not be hard, and success becomes most meaningful when it helps others rise.
