How she shines: Leadership: Susan left a successful career at IBM to build a small business in commercial cleaning, and she brought Fortune 500 discipline with her. She applies the same rigorous processes to recruiting franchise owners and winning clients, with a deliberate focus on core industries such as healthcare. That discipline was tested when COVID-19 hit. Susan kept her team and her franchise owners steady through it, securing scarce disinfecting supplies when they were nearly impossible to get, organizing training on new protocols, and helping franchise owners take on the surge in disinfecting work rather than be overwhelmed by it. Their businesses kept running, and their clients' facilities stayed safe.
Technology: Susan put brand-audit software in place to measure service standards consistently across her market, replacing subjective assessment with real data. She uses AI tools to coach and develop her team. She is also evaluating new equipment, including robotics, so her franchise owners are positioned for where commercial cleaning is heading rather than reacting to it later.
Sustainability: Green cleaning is a deliberate part of the service Susan delivers, not an add-on. She equips franchise owners with green chemicals and equipment, adapting programs to each client's specific sustainability goals to help those clients meet their environmental commitments without giving up quality.
Community: Susan treats clients as community partners rather than accounts. Her team supports organizations doing vital work across Chicago, including local food pantries, Howard Brown Health and its LGBTQ+ initiatives, and Pillars and its suicide prevention efforts. Clean, safe facilities let those organizations put their attention where it belongs—on the people they serve.
Teamwork: Many of Susan's franchise owners started as janitors who wanted to work for themselves instead of for someone else. She helps them build businesses that provide for their families. One started his business while still in college and has grown into a top producer who now adopts new equipment on his own initiative, which is exactly the independence she is trying to create.
Development: Susan builds training around strong brand standards, drawing on ISSA and partners—including Diversey, Staples, and equipment suppliers. She is growing healthcare cleaning certifications among her franchise owners to serve that core industry well. She also runs workshops with insurance agents and payroll services on hiring and running a business, so owners learn the parts of entrepreneurship nobody teaches them, backed by consistent, proactive reviews that keep them moving forward.
Although Susan could have stayed at IBM, she instead took what she learned there and used it to turn janitors into business owners, bring enterprise-grade standards to a small business, and keep an entire network of independent owners working through a pandemic. She measures her success by how far the people around her have climbed.
Years in the industry: 10 years
Job responsibilities: As owner of Vanguard Cleaning Systems of Chicago, Susan leads the regional franchise organization across the Chicago market. She is responsible for recruiting and awarding new franchise businesses, winning and managing the commercial cleaning contracts the franchise owners service, and building the training and support systems those owners rely on. She oversees her sales and marketing team, drives business development into core industries such as healthcare, and owns the processes that protect service standards across the customer base. Her focus day to day is on making franchise owners successful enough to sustain and grow businesses of their own.
Career path: Susan describes her career as a trellis rather than a ladder. She started in sales and marketing with small entrepreneurial companies in housewares, then saw where long-term growth was heading and moved into selling IT consulting services to Fortune 500 companies. Realizing she needed to work inside a Fortune 500 company to really understand how to sell to one, she joined IBM, where she held a global role building partnerships between IBM and other large software companies. Eventually, she missed the entrepreneurial side of a smaller business and joined her husband in growing Vanguard Cleaning Systems of Chicago. Every stop along that trellis now shows up in the work: the sales and marketing background in how she develops her team, and the partnership experience in how she coaches franchise owners.
Best advice received: Susan isn't sure it qualifies as the "best," but she can still hear her father saying it—if it's worth doing, it's worth doing right. Susan likes to be successful and is openly competitive, and that standard has carried into how she runs the business.
Fun fact: Susan wrote cookbooks and sold microwave ovens door-to-door, which is not the résumé most people expect from a former IBM executive.