How she shines: As a key member of Voda Cleaning & Restoration of Northern New Jersey, Maureen wears many hats and has become an integral part of the company's day-to-day operations. Her leadership starts with communication and integrity. She works directly with customers from the initial scheduling of a job through completion, helping coordinate teams, manage changing schedules, resolve customer concerns, follow up on completed work, and assist with invoicing and revenue collection. She understands that great cleaning is only one part of delivering an exceptional customer experience.
Teamwork is one of Maureen's greatest strengths. She helps coordinate our cleaning and restoration technicians, communicates between the field and office, and is always willing to step in wherever needed. Whether we have a routine cleaning project or an emergency restoration job that completely changes the day's schedule, Maureen helps keep everyone organized and moving in the same direction.
Maureen also embraces technology and innovation. She has adapted to the technology and systems Voda Cleaning & Restoration uses to schedule customers, communicate with its field teams, track projects, document work, manage customer information, and improve the efficiency of the entire operation. She understands that today's cleaning and restoration industry requires combining hands-on experience with technology to deliver faster and more professional service.
Her commitment to development is equally important. Maureen continually learns more about the cleaning and restoration industry, company services, customer expectations, and the operational side of a growing business. She shares that knowledge with others and helps reinforce a culture of accountability, professionalism, and continuous improvement.
Finally, Maureen has a genuine commitment to community. Voda Cleaning & Restoration is a locally-owned business serving its neighbors during situations ranging from everyday cleaning needs to water, mold, fire, and other property emergencies. Maureen treats customers with empathy and respect, understanding that employees are often entering someone's home during a stressful situation.
What makes Maureen special is her willingness to do whatever is necessary for the customer and the team. She leads through service, communication, hard work, and example—and makes the people around her better.
Years in the industry: 3 years
Job responsibilities: Maureen works with client scheduling and coordination, communicating directly with customers to schedule cleaning and restoration services, confirm appointments, coordinate access, and accommodate changes or special requests. She also supports customer communication by serving as an important point of contact for customers before, during, and after projects, helping ensure they understand what to expect and that their questions and concerns are addressed promptly. For team scheduling and dispatch coordination, Maureen helps organize technicians and cleaning crews based on job requirements, employee availability, geography, and customer scheduling needs. When directing daily operations coordination, she works with the team to make sure jobs are properly staffed, technicians know where they need to be, necessary information is communicated, and projects continue moving forward.
Maureen also oversees revenue collection and accounts receivable, assisting with customer invoicing, payment collection, outstanding balances, and follow-up to help ensure completed work converts into collected revenue. During job follow-up, she addresses active and completed jobs to make sure customers are satisfied, outstanding items are resolved, and projects are brought through to completion. In managing quality control, she helps maintain Voda's standards for professionalism, cleanliness, communication, and customer service, and addresses issues when expectations are not being met. Maureen also provides cleaning operations support by helping oversee residential and commercial cleaning projects, including carpet, upholstery, tile and grout, air duct, odor, and specialty cleaning services. When aiding restoration operations support, she actively assists with the coordination of water damage, mold remediation, fire/smoke, sewage, and other restoration projects where timing and communication are especially critical.
As part of her duties, Maureen also works with emergency job coordination to help reorganize schedules and resources when emergency water, mold, sewage, or other restoration calls require immediate attention. In this line of work, she is also involved with customer relationship management and develops relationships with customers to help create the level of trust and personal service that leads to repeat business, referrals, and positive reviews. Her leadership role also lends to her team communication, where she acts as a liaison between ownership, office staff, technicians, crew leaders, and customers to help keep everyone aligned. When she is needed for problem resolution, she handles scheduling conflicts, customer concerns, job changes, and unexpected operational issues, often working behind the scenes to keep problems from affecting the customer experience.
As administrative support, Maureen helps maintain accurate customer and job information, coordinates documentation, tracks job progress, and supports the administrative requirements necessary to keep a busy cleaning and restoration company organized. When supporting revenue and business, she helps identify opportunities for additional services when appropriate, ensures work is properly completed and billed, and supports the company's overall revenue and growth objectives. Additionally, as it relates to culture and leadership, she provides leadership and support to employees while reinforcing the company's expectations around professionalism, integrity, teamwork, accountability, and treating customers' homes and businesses with respect.
Maureen is ultimately one of the people who helps connect every part of the business—the customer, the technicians, the office, the schedule, the completed work, and the payment. She frequently works behind the scenes, solving problems, coordinating people, communicating with customers, and making sure commitments are kept. Her contribution isn't limited to performing a service; she helps make sure the entire customer experience happens successfully from the initial call and scheduling through completion, customer satisfaction, and collection of revenue.
Career path: Maureen's career path is unique because each chapter has centered on helping people.
She began in the corporate world, building a successful career in Human Resources and eventually serving as HR Director for a law firm in New York City. That experience gave her a strong foundation in leadership, employee relations, communication, organization, and managing people in a fast-paced professional environment.
Maureen later made a significant career change and became a teacher working with children with special needs. It was a very different environment, but one that reflected something important about who she is. She wanted her work to have a direct impact on people's lives. Teaching strengthened her patience, empathy, adaptability, and ability to communicate with individuals who have very different needs.
Today, Maureen has brought those two worlds together as an important part of a family-owned cleaning and restoration business, Voda Cleaning & Restoration of Northern New Jersey. She helps coordinate customers and employees, schedule projects, manage changing priorities, support cleaning and restoration teams, communicate with customers, resolve problems, assist with billing and revenue collection, and make sure customers are taken care of from their initial call through completion of the job.
For Maureen, this chapter is also about giving back. After a career in corporate leadership and education, she now has the opportunity to help build a company that serves the local community. Many of Voda's customers call during difficult moments—water damage, mold, fire, sewage, or simply when their home or business needs professional care. Maureen understands that behind every job is a person or family who needs help.
Her career may have taken her from a New York City law firm to a special-needs classroom to the cleaning and restoration industry, but there has been one consistent thread throughout: Maureen takes care of people. That is what has defined her career and what she continues to bring to Voda Cleaning & Restoration's employees, customers, and community today.
Best advice received: The best career advice Maureen has received is simple: treat others the way you would want to be treated. That philosophy has followed her throughout her career—from Human Resources, to teaching children with special needs, and now to the cleaning and restoration industry.
In this business, empathy is especially important. We often meet customers when they are having one of the worst days imaginable. Their home may have been damaged by water, mold, sewage, or fire, and what is a normal workday for us can be an overwhelming and emotional experience for them. Maureen always reminds us that we aren't simply cleaning or restoring a property—we are helping people put their homes and their lives back together. She approaches customers with patience, compassion, honesty, and respect, and treats their homes as she would want someone to treat her own.
For Maureen, doing the right thing and taking care of people isn't just good business. It's the right way to live and work.
Fun fact: People might be surprised to learn just how diverse Maureen's professional journey has been.
Before entering the cleaning and restoration industry, Maureen was an HR Director for a law firm in New York City. She then made a dramatic career change and became a teacher working with children with special needs. Today, she has reinvented herself once again, bringing everything she learned from those two very different careers into our family-owned cleaning and restoration business.
While those careers may seem completely unrelated, Maureen sees them differently. Human Resources taught her how to lead and work with people. Teaching children with special needs taught her extraordinary patience, empathy, and adaptability. Cleaning and restoration gives her the opportunity to combine all of those skills while helping customers and employees every day.
People may be surprised by the different careers she has had, but there has always been one common denominator: people come first.