Women-Owned Janitorial Firm Celebrates 25 Years in Chicago

Helping Hands Commercial Cleaning reached its 25-year milestone as an active commercial cleaning operation across Chicagoland, marking the occasion with a reflection on how the firm has grown from a single founder’s vision into a 120-plus employee organization serving commercial and medical facilities across five Illinois counties.

Gosia Baran founded the company in 2001, building it from the ground up as a woman-owned enterprise at a time when large-scale commercial cleaning was a field dominated by established regional players. Over the past two and a half decades, Helping Hands Commercial Cleaning has expanded its footprint to cover Cook, DuPage, Kane, Lake, and Will counties, meeting the needs of corporate offices, medical facilities, and other commercial properties throughout the region.

What sets the milestone apart is not simply the passage of time, but the certification infrastructure Helping Hands Commercial Cleaning has built to support its work. The company holds GBAC STAR-accredited cleaning status—a designation issued by the Global Biorisk Advisory Council that requires facilities and service providers to demonstrate competency in biorisk prevention, response, and remediation. The certification reflects protocols aligned with hospital-grade disinfection standards, which is particularly significant given the company’s active presence in healthcare environments.

“Twenty-five years in this industry is a reflection of the people on our team and the trust our clients place in us every single day,” says Baran, Founder of Helping Hands Commercial Cleaning. “From day one, the goal was to build something that met the highest standards—not just for general commercial spaces, but for the environments where cleanliness has a direct impact on health and safety.”

25 Years of Service

A significant portion of the company’s work involves specialized medical office cleaning services delivered to healthcare providers across the region. Medical office cleaning services require a different level of rigor than standard janitorial work—including strict cross-contamination controls, proper handling of biohazardous environments, and compliance with infection control guidelines. Helping Hands Commercial Cleaning applies its GBAC STAR-accredited protocols across these engagements to consistently meet those requirements.

Beyond healthcare settings, the company serves corporate offices and commercial properties throughout the five-county area, operating with a workforce structured around W-2 employees rather than independent contractors—a staffing model that ensures training oversight and accountability across every client site.

The 25-year mark positions Helping Hands Commercial Cleaning among the longer-tenured independent commercial cleaning operations in the region. Commercial cleaning Chicagoland businesses source from local providers, often prioritizing continuity and institutional knowledge—factors that compound over decades of operation in a dense, multi-county metropolitan area.

Baran’s leadership as a woman-owned business founder also reflects a broader shift in the facilities services sector, where ownership diversity has grown steadily alongside demand for credentialed, compliance-focused service providers. With a team of more than 120 direct employees and an operational footprint spanning from Cook County into the collar counties of DuPage, Kane, Lake, and Will, Helping Hands Commercial Cleaning enters its next chapter as an established presence in the Chicagoland commercial and medical cleaning market.