From Compassion to Career: A Pennsylvania Leader’s Path to Business Success

When Market leader Ashley Nichols first started working with Help at Home, she was hired to open a new branch in Pittsburgh. At the time, it was only the second Help at Home location in Pennsylvania.  

“I loved the idea of building something from nothing… I kind of felt like there was only one direction to go,” she said with a laugh.  

Very quickly, she began to see home care as more than just a job – but as something that gave her work and career more purpose.   

Ashley said she was always committed to the job, something that was evident when she made flash cards to help her learn health care acronyms and personally transported cardboard boxes full of paperwork across the state. But that kind of commitment was different than having a heart for it. “’I made this commitment to goals. I’m going to execute this process’ that was kind of more of how I thought,” she said.  

“But as I started meeting people, that’s when the depth of what Help at Home does came to the forefront. I became very emotionally involved in some of the cases and very attached to what we do,” she said.  

She had previously worked in commercial leasing and mortgages. In that work, when a problem arose, it would lead to “disappointments” – a pushed back closing date, or a need to renegotiate something. “But in home care, you had a person whose quality of life was affected,” she said. “I had never felt that before.”   

As the sole employee in the new office, she had personally visited client homes as part of the intake procedure and talked to them face-to-face and assured them that Help at Home could meet their needs. So if there was a staffing problem, it wasn’t just a routine work problem.   

“There’s a human being on the other end that now might not eat today…” she said. “So you have to have safeguards that you put in place.” 

In one case, Ashley ended up doing the care herself to make sure the client’s needs were met – an eye-opening experience.  

“It’s not just a business, right? It’s, it’s not just hitting targets…. these are people with real challenges,” she said.   

Ashley’s passion and leadership catapulted her into the role she holds now.  She still works from that same Pittsburgh branch office, which helps her stay connected to her very first role with Help at Home and reminds her about the importance of each individual the team she leads serves every day.  

“I’m still here to hear the stories and the challenges,” she said.