About Us

Jesse S. Donovan, P.E.

Jesse Donovan, PE, got his professional start working for a municipality near Portland, Oregon, managing American Recovery Act funded infrastructure construction. An alum of Stanford University, Jesse graduated with the idea that he might slosh through streams and rivers for a living as an environmental engineer. After realizing he’d like to earn a good living some day, he ended up finding the right balance of physical engagement, purposeful work, and practical employment in the ditches, manholes, and grey government buildings of the rainy Pacific Northwest. From there, he took his municipal experience to the private sector in the Denver land development market where he excelled at creating comprehensive designs and understanding the twists and turns of the City approval processes. In his many years here in Denver, he has brought a myriad of projects to completion, including large industrial complexes, big box retail, infill hospitality, brewpubs, and school campuses. Jesse is exceptionally proud of the projects that he works on and the clients he serves, often forcing his poor family to take trips to photograph curbs, inlets, and detention ponds on the weekends. Jesse thrives when he is able to help his clients work through challenges with their projects and is driven by the challenge of a difficult design or regulatory problem.

 A consummate perfectionist, Jesse is on year 7 of renovating his own fixer-upper Denver home. He spends his free time with a hammer and drill in hand, muttering, “You can do the work yourself, they said, it’ll be great, they said!” He and his wife have already decided that their two young daughters will grow up to be an electrician and plumber duo – and will buy them a nice house and a fancy car. Jesse attributes his affinity for practical design and his general do-it-yourself nature to his late father, Tom, also an engineer, who built their family homestead with the help of his wife and two young sons. Jesse finds his humble role in helping to bring a client’s vision to completion to be invigorating, and he feels lucky to have found a profession that so perfectly matches his passion for design and creation with purpose.

Charles W. Keener Jr, P.E.

Charlie’s path to Brightlighter was molded by a long journey of employment, travel, and life experiences. Charlie was born in Philadelphia, PA and raised by a hard-working ICU nurse and a self-employed mechanical engineer. Charlie took his first job delivering pizzas at the age of sixteen, moved out of his parents’ house at eighteen, and landed in Colorado at twenty-two. Before his discovery of engineering Charlie worked as a window cleaner, cook, butchers apprentice, server, bartender, camp counselor, sailing instructor, and first mate on a 110-ft sailboat. Charlie spent time traveling Europe, the Caribbean, and the great American West before finally falling in love with the mountains of Colorado.

Shortly after his arrival in Colorado, Charlie enrolled at the University of Colorado-Denver to begin his route to a technical career. Initially studying environmental science, a water resources course prompted his shift to the civil engineering discipline. With the help of some inspiring professors and fellow students Charlie graduated with a Bachelors of Science degree in Civil Engineering.

Charlie’s employment experience leading up to Brightlighter has taken him through multiple disciplines of engineering, strengthening his skill set and broadening his interpretation of what it means to be a well-rounded engineer. His career began in environmental engineering, designing and permitting hazardous waste landfill cells through the EPA. After a few years, Charlie transitioned to land development engineering and was employed as a project engineer and manager for various Denver-based firms. His experience includes entitling commercial, institutional, and residential projects including schools, hotels, mixed-use, and high-density multi-family projects.

Charlie is constantly moving forward to develop a career that suits his desire for growth, problem solving, and creative freedom.

Client Testimonials