American Katerra Moderates Panel at TxEDC’s The Road Ahead

What does it take to turn an internship into a career? On July 24, 2026, the Texas Economic Development Corporation (TxEDC) gathered interns and industry leaders from across the state in downtown Austin to work on exactly that question. The event was called The Road Ahead, and its tagline set the tone: “Today’s Interns. Tomorrow’s Leaders.” American Katerra had a special reason to be proud that morning — our own Milea Amanai, who leads Human Resources & Public Relations at American Katerra, LLC, took the stage to moderate the opening panel, “Interning with a Purpose.”

The Road Ahead was hosted by TxEDC — the independently funded 501(c)(3) nonprofit responsible for marketing and promoting Texas as a premier business location — with support from the Texas Workforce Commission, the Texas Intern Network, and CenterPoint Energy. The audience was made up of motivated interns and students, most between 18 and 23, preparing to make the leap from campus to career.

The program brought serious voices to that conversation. Dr. Valerie G. Segovia, TxEDC’s Vice President of Investor Relations, opened the morning together with Joe Esparza, Chairman and Commissioner Representing Employers of the Texas Workforce Commission. Bryan Daniel, President of NYSE Texas and a former Chair of the Texas Workforce Commission, set the stage. A second panel, “Career Crossroads,” brought together leaders including former Texas Secretary of State Ruth Hughs, Strangeworks founder and CEO William Hurley, and Perseus Defense co-founder Dr. Jason Cornelius. Dr. Cortlan Wickliff of Rice University — who became the youngest engineering graduate in the nation when he earned his Rice degree at 19 — closed the event.

Fittingly for a morning about interns, The Road Ahead was organized by one: Sophia Hughs, TxEDC’s summer business development intern, planned and coordinated the entire event. The conversations she set in motion ranged from navigating early-career transitions to understanding how AI is reshaping the workplace — and they were full of energy and real-world insight.

Milea moderated the morning’s first panel, joined by three professionals who have recently walked the road her audience is about to take: Ainara Almeida, founder of Flow State Collective and a former project manager at AECOM; Eric Andresen, Sales Development Manager at Loop and a member of the TxEDC Board of Directors; and Stephen Demerson, Business Systems Analyst at Southwest Airlines.

Across forty-five minutes of moderated conversation and audience Q&A, the panel dug into the questions that actually keep students up at night. What helps you make the transition from college into the workforce? How much of a career should be mapped out in advance — and how much left open to unexpected opportunities? How do you build professional relationships that are authentic rather than transactional? Which skills, technical and interpersonal, are worth developing before day one? The session closed rapid-fire, with each panelist offering the interns one sentence of advice for the road ahead.

Milea designed the conversation from experience. Her role at American Katerra is her own first full-time position after graduation, and she curated questions she would have wanted answered during her university years. Reflecting on the session in our LinkedIn post, she shared how inspiring it was to hear directly from interns across so many different backgrounds — their sharp questions, their ambition, and their clear drive for what comes next.

American Katerra is proudly an Executive Signature Investor with TxEDC, and events like The Road Ahead are exactly why. As a next-generation steel fabrication provider headquartered in San Antonio, we think about talent the way we think about supply chains: the pipeline has to be built before it is needed. The engineers, fabricators, project managers, and business professionals who will carry American manufacturing and construction forward are in classrooms and internships today.

There is also a simpler reason. Our vision is “Build for Dreams,” and helping the next generation build for their dreams is that vision applied to people rather than steel. Supporting Texas’ workforce-development community — alongside partners like TxEDC and the Texas Workforce Commission — is part of what it means for a Japanese-backed company to put down real roots in this state.

If The Road Ahead was about bridging the distance between school and career, Milea has spent her whole life bridging distances. Born in Tokyo, she grew up between Dubai and rural Montana before returning to Japan to earn a degree in International Relations from Ritsumeikan University in Kyoto, including a year abroad at American University in Washington, D.C., focused on U.S.–Japan relations. She joined American Katerra as an Executive Assistant and HR coordinator before stepping into her current role leading Human Resources & Public Relations. Today she helps the company operate across English- and Japanese-language environments and shapes a workplace culture that blends Japanese and American business values — which is, in miniature, what American Katerra itself is building in Texas.

A sincere thank-you to the Texas Economic Development Corporation for having us, and a special congratulations to Sophia Hughs for putting together such a seamless, impactful event. Watching Milea guide an open, genuine discussion with the next generation of Texas leaders was a proud moment for our whole team — and we look forward to many more mornings like it. Here are a few more scenes from the morning:

American Katerra, LLC is the U.S. subsidiary of Yamaguchi Heavy Industries Ltd., delivering Japanese-engineered structural steel fabrication to American projects. From our San Antonio headquarters, we combine Japanese precision with U.S. on-the-ground execution to support general contractors, construction managers, structural engineers, and project owners across the United States.

To learn more about our capabilities or to discuss an upcoming project, contact our team — or explore our Green & Blue Carbon Steel™ product line.