“Hey, let’s roll.” This is what Sarah Wallace—a military spouse, mother of three and wife to ABC’s 2025 Young Professional of the Year, Ray Wallace—said in 2021 when she learned her family would be moving…again. The couple, who married following Wallace’s second deployment, have since moved multiple times and had three children. No strangers to change, when the opportunity arose for Wallace to take a position at Gaylor Electric’s Nashville office, the couple embraced this next move—but little did they know where it would lead them more than half a decade later.
SIT DOWN AND LISTEN
Ray Wallace spent his childhood with his brothers in Missouri helping their father—a lineman at Intercounty Electric Cooperative—with one of his side businesses in the logging industry.
In 2003, though, Wallace traded the trees for the desert, enlisting in the army out of high school and joining the 82nd Airborne Division at Fort Bragg. “I signed up to jump out of airplanes before I ever actually flew one,” he says, which is exactly the sort of ambitious attitude that spurred him through two deployments: to Afghanistan and then Iraq.
During his nine years in military service, wartime brought hardship like financial strife, divorce and suicide—challenges not unlike those faced in the construction industry—to many in Wallace’s battalion. As staff sergeant, Wallace found himself navigating these experiences as a mentor to his fellow soldiers.
His strategy? Sit down and listen. “If somebody’s having problems,” he says, “they want to talk to somebody that they can trust. And when you lead an organization, at the end of the day, you have to be the person that people trust. That doesn’t mean you have to be a Ph.D. If you actually sit down and listen to that person with kindness, that could go a long way. And then when they talk, sit down and listen and then understand what resources are available to help.”
This position of leadership poised Wallace not only for listening to, but also learning from his team—skills he would take with him when he returned to civilian life and joined the construction industry. But even leaders need someone to lean on from time to time.
“Sergeant First Class Dennis Reidman was my primary mentor in Fort Bragg,” says Wallace. “He was my platoon sergeant and first boss that I ever had out there.” Then in 2006 at Fort Leonard Wood, Wallace found himself following his battalion commander Jeff Anderson. “He’s the one who told me whenever I was a young NCO,” says Wallace, “that you lead by walking around and not sitting behind a desk. I still talk to him to this day.” Today, as a husband, father of three and merit-shop advocate, Wallace continues to take this advice to heart.
Of course, Wallace also credits his wife, Sarah, with much of the support he felt throughout his service. When their family started to grow, they knew it was time to land the plane, and a runway in Indiana happened to be open.
“When we decided to get out [of the military],” he says, “there weren’t a lot of opportunities in small-town Missouri. So, we decided to go to Indiana, which is really where my introduction to ABC happened. Sarah was the main supporter of me during that time.”
They welcomed their first daughter in 2011, and in 2012, Wallace officially retired from the Army—but he would view his transition to civilian life with the same attitude of ambition that kept him aloft in those airplanes. “Being an active and present father,” he says, “is a role I cherish deeply.”
GATHER NO MOSS
Wallace took his army leadership knowledge and talents to Brenneco Fire Protection Inc., where he spent eight years working his way from an inspection technician to operations manager. As he settled into his new role on the ground, his family would settle—and expand—as well. Wallace and his wife would add one more daughter and a son to their own battalion, and Wallace would go from leading his group of soldiers to coaching his daughter’s softball team.
“It’s always exciting,” says Wallace of his civilian life. “I look at coaching youth sports the same way as you run a location or you manage people, because you’re constantly developing people into what they need to be, whether it’s a kid who wants to be a pitcher or a shortstop or whatever position it is. And then you put that group together to be able to go and win ball games. The same as you develop young people, young apprentices, young project engineers—you develop those and you put the team together to go win.”
Wallace was getting into the groove of raising a family, coaching youth sports and working full time in Indiana, but—as he said—his life is always exciting. In November 2021, the family moved to Nashville, where he found not only a career as a project manager—working his way up to operations manager—at Gaylor Electric’s Nashville location, but new mentors in Gaylor’s Rob Griffith and Chuck Goodrich.
“These men are two of the most important people, not just by the positions that they hold in the company, but the way that they mentor and teach,” he says. “They have a clear understanding that people are still going to make mistakes, but they really provide you the tools to be as successful as you want to be.”
Between a family of five, a softball team and the Gaylor Electric team, Wallace has a lot to balance—something Gaylor Electric is well-versed in recognizing and supporting for its employees.
“Gaylor does a very good job of blending the two together,” says Wallace. “Whether it’s the company picnics or the tailgates or the Christmas party, it’s all being a part of the Gaylor environment. Gaylor does a better job of that than any place that I’ve ever seen.”
ONCE A MENTOR, ALWAYS A MENTOR
Wallace spends his time off the jobsite coaching his daughter’s travel softball team, as an active participant in Go Build Tennessee, an advocate for Folds of Honor, as well as working with the Wounded Warrior Project. He balances those efforts with his broader ABC involvement: In Indiana, he helped start the ABC Prep Academy; and in Tennessee, he has helped grow the Construction Trades Academy into a leading apprenticeship provider, and has served on the ABC Greater Tennessee chapter board of directors since 2024.
“I believe that success lies in being a lifelong learner,” says Wallace. Considering everything that he has already learned and the things he has already taught so many people around him, it may be hard to believe he isn’t even 40 years old. For Wallace, what was hard to believe was that he was named ABC’s 2025 Young Professional of the Year.
“It’s really cool. It keeps you humble,” he says. “Jeff Anderson said that sometimes people get promoted high enough they forget where they came from. When you do that, you lose the values that actually got you to where you are.” As a lifelong learner, Wallace is sure not to forget where he came from and to remember where he is going. He says his vision is to “create a pipeline of skilled professionals who are passionate about their work and dedicated to excellence.”
“This is a great win for the Greater Tennessee chapter, for Gaylor Electric and for me,” he says, “but I want to make sure we are still providing opportunities for apprentices and young folks, that they know this is a path that they can choose to go down.”
