My career in childcare began in 1999 as an assistant teacher/"float" at Ashburn Village Country Day School. The director/owner George Dakes taught me a great deal on what kind of Director you should be, kind and empathetic but holding people to your expectations. I grew from there and worked at a variety of centers in many positions through out the last 2 decades. I have worked for single owner Centers such as Wee Care, Ashburn Village Country Day School, Berry Good School, ELLC and for Larger Corporate Centers such as KinderCare/Children's World, Fred Hutchison Childcare Center and Northwest Center. I used the experiences at these centers to develop my educational and work Philosophies. Within these philosophies I have recently opened a new Employee Owned Non-profit Childcare Center. We opened October 2023 and expected to be at 75% capacity in 2 months as well we are fully staffed in a time that most industries are struggling to retain and hire passionate workers, we have done in one months time. I accept the credit for the ideas, but pass on credit to my amazing staff for helping to implement these ideas. This center is my greatest personal achievement. I have worked for many centers in good environments and bad and a long time dream of mine was to create a center that was positive, authentic, respectful, and where the staff is held up as the assets they are. This is why it was important for me to build this new center as employee owned.