Meet Iris Santiago, the Chief Operations Officer of In Home Personal Services, which was born to provide customized health care tailored to meet every client’s individual needs.
In Home Personal Services is a non-medical senior care provider. It ensures comfort, compassion, and quality care in the home to those who need that assistance for an independent lifestyle.
Iris is a licensed Occupational Therapist and Certified Professional in Human Resources. She earned her bachelor’s degree in Occupational Therapy from one of the Universities in the Philippines.
Iris often says, “It always brings a smile to my heart whenever I hear that a client we cared for is grateful for the impact we made in his or her life.” She believes it is not about the compliment itself but the thought that she and her team at In Home Personal Services have made a significant difference in someone’s life is very rewarding.
For Iris, her role is a lot more than just a job; it is her calling. She aspires to further extend this program to other care providers enabling them to provide better quality care to a client or a loved one.
The Steadfast Leader
Iris’s clinical expertise has been well paired with her business acumen and sense of care for others. Before coming to the U.S., Iris worked in a community rehab and a hospital-based rehab for more than seven years as an Occupational Therapist.
Once she arrived in the U.S., she was quickly recruited as the Human Resources Director at IHPS. Over the next decade, she worked very hard and was ultimately promoted to the Agency Manager, eventually the Administrator, and now the Chief Operations Officer.
She says, “It may sound cheesy, but we provide our services with heart. All programs and services are really central to our clients, and all of our sister companies have the same goal of becoming to be a one-stop shop for our clients. Our services are affordable but with quality at its best.”
The best part about Iris is her humble nature. She immigrated to the country and took an executive position without formal training and experience. As the HR Director, she further developed her knowledge and experience by getting her professional HR certification through the HR Certification Institute in 2010.
The Founder’s Word
When we asked Michael A. Collura, the founder and President of IHPS, why did he choose Iris all these years ago? He says, “When you meet Iris right away, you can tell she is intelligent, driven, and genuinely cares about people. These are not common qualities to find in people today. So, we had to act fast when she first applied. It was clear that her career path forward was going to be so much more in the years to come. He also added, “When the time came and my own Mother, In Home Personal Services’ other Founder, was to move on from the company, there were some pretty big shoes to fill. Iris quite simply was the only one in our brand’s history that could fulfill the role, and as such, with the support of the entire company, Iris was promoted to the Administrator. Over these past years, it is clear she is capable and ready, and one day she will take over for me as I look to retire, and Iris Santiago will be our CEO.”
Preparing for Challenges
For In Home Personal Services, caregivers are the most critical asset. However, employing a caregiver is not an easy task to do with a lesser number of caregivers and very high demand. So, over the past few years, the organization has come up with an innovative solution and has built and improved its own school for caregivers.
Currently, In Home Personal Services is the only organization that offers caregiver certification for all fifty states in America. This solution eventually became one of the major differentiators for the brand.
As an organization, IHPS believes the pandemic has opened the eyes of those who used to take healthcare professionals for granted. In IHPS, no one ever wavered in the face of uncertainty, fear, and confusion during the initial stages of the pandemic. The whole IHPS team now hopes to bring a fundamental change in inequality and access to care and gratitude towards the people who work on the frontline.
