Eric Fortenberry, Founder and CEO of JobTread, Named EY US Entrepreneur Of The Year® 2026 Southwest Award Winner
Dallas, TX | June 2026
Eric Fortenberry, Founder and CEO of JobTread, was named an EY US Entrepreneur Of The Year® 2026 Southwest Award winner. Fortenberry was selected as a Southwest regional winner from a field of nearly 1,000 program participants and 592 finalists nationwide.
Fortenberry launched JobTread in 2021 after building an early version of the software to fix the broken, manual processes he encountered while running a general contracting company. Today, the Dallas-based construction management software helps more than 12,000 contracting companies and 1.5 million users with $30 billion in construction jobs sold and managed. Its budget-first platform brings all facets of a construction project together in one place, giving jobs-based businesses financial transparency at every stage. Under Fortenberry’s leadership, JobTread has become one of the fastest-growing technology companies in North America and has been repeatedly recognized as a Best Place to Work.
“Being named an Entrepreneur Of The Year award winner is a tremendous honor,” said Fortenberry. “It’s an award I’m proud to share with our team and the contractors who trust JobTread to help run their businesses every day. Watching our customers grow and succeed is the most rewarding part of what we do, and to have that work recognized with an award like this means the world to me.”
Now in its 41st year, the Entrepreneur Of The Year program honors business leaders for their ingenuity, courage and entrepreneurial spirit. It celebrates original founders who bootstrapped their business from inception or raised outside capital to grow their company, transformational CEOs who infused innovation into an existing organization to catapult its trajectory and multigenerational family business leaders who reimagined a legacy business model to strengthen it for the future.
Regional winners were chosen by an independent panel of past winners, top CEOs and business leaders. Judges assessed candidates on long-term value creation, entrepreneurial spirit, purpose-driven commitment, and significant growth and impact.
As a Southwest award winner, Fortenberry will now be considered by the national judges for the Entrepreneur Of The Year 2026 National Awards, which will be presented in November at the annual Strategic Growth Forum®. The National Overall Award winner will move on to compete for the EY World Entrepreneur Of The Year™ Award in May 2027.
About Entrepreneur Of The Year
Founded in 1986, Entrepreneur Of The Year® has celebrated more than 11,000 ambitious visionaries who are leading successful, dynamic businesses in the US, and it has since expanded to nearly 60 countries and territories globally.
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About JobTread
JobTread provides end-to-end construction management software to help businesses more efficiently manage all of their processes, from pre-construction through to project completion. The platform creates a central location to manage jobs, teams, schedules, documents, photos, finances, customers, vendors, sub-contractors, and more all in one place. Its budget-first approach creates financial transparency at every stage of a project, mitigating risk and ensuring the project stays on time and on budget. Get organized, complete your projects on time, and increase your profits with JobTread.
To learn more about JobTread, visit www.jobtread.com or call 972-388-1001.
Follow JobTread online:
Facebook: www.facebook.com/JobTread
Instagram: www.instagram.com/jobtread
YouTube: www.youtube.com/jobtread
Twitter: @JobTread
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/company/jobtread
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