What are your main responsibilities?

I’m the Landscape Manager for Wisconsin which is a large region with a lot of distance between customer sites. Most weeks I’m on the road visiting our client facilities. I oversee the landscape for 10 hospitals and approximately 35 clinics in northern Wisconsin.  I try to visit the hospitals at least every other week and the clinics monthly. It’s my job to ensure that my teams have what they need to present our client’s facilities in a high-quality manner in terms of landscaping. I also spend time training our newer employees. My team consists of two supervisors and around a dozen landscaping technicians. We’re hiring additional staff right now and I’m so proud of the way my teams are working hard, going above and beyond to be sure all the work is completed on time. I manage the care of facilities and address any issues that may come up. I liaison with other facilities and regional managers and hospital administration when needed.
 

How did you arrive in your current role?

I actually got my start in landscaping when I was in high school. I was in the youth conservation corps and worked for the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources. After I graduated, I joined the military. When I left the military there were lots of landscaping jobs available and I loved working outside, so I reentered the field. I took a detour into medical purchasing for a time and then after 30 years I moved back to Wisconsin from Colorado. I worked for a small landscaping company for seven years and then joined Medxcel. Medxcel is a fantastic organization for landscapers; it offers steady work, opportunities for advancement, and great benefits, things that many smaller landscaping companies just can’t offer. There’s no other company I could work for in this field and get the kind of PTO I do here. Medxcel offered me everything I was looking for in a career as well as a very sound work environment.
 

What is the best part of your job?

The best part of my job is my team; I have a really great team! Our leadership is wonderful and very transparent. They support me and I hope that I’m a part of that leadership team supporting our associates. My biggest takeaway from Medxcel so far is the wonderful associates and positive interactions that we all have on a regular basis. I can only be a success with the help and support of my team. They get rave reviews from our clients and I’m so grateful to work with them. The Medxcel culture and leadership create that wonderful work environment.
 

What would you say to someone who asks you if you recommend working for Medxcel?

Medxcel is really a great company and you’re not going to find a better benefits package. There’s lots of room for advancement and it’s a very graceful company; that’s really important in this day and age. This company allows me the ability to go out and do community service on company time. Medxcel affords me the ability to take an entire crew of employees down to our local veteran’s cemetery to help with clean up. I’ve never seen that kind of support for service anywhere else and I think that’s a very important part of who Medxcel is. It’s a great selling point in this day and age, when many are struggling to find meaning in their work.
 

What types of community service projects do you and your team participate in?

We have an ongoing relationship with the curator of our local veteran’s cemetery. We’ve done four projects with them this past year, everything from fall cleanup to having a team go out and help place flags on the graves for Memorial Day. The team took it upon themselves at 6:00pm to meet at the cemetery which is a couple hours away from where they live and place the flags. And then the next week our associates went back and helped to pick the flags up. We work with some other local organizations too. I encourage my team members to find projects that align with their interests. We’ve helped to collect furniture and other necessities to be shipped to Nicaragua where there is a need for those items. We have a supervisor who came to me with this idea, and I let him run with it. I think bringing my team into community service is one of the things I’m most proud of because they’ve really excelled.
 

Which of Medxcel’s Core Values speaks most to you?

Integrity really speaks to me. Without integrity your word really doesn’t have any meaning. I think that integrity is the cornerstone of any person’s life, that their word needs to carry meaning, and that integrity should be the driving force in our day-to-day existence. Medxcel’s word matters to me, and I want my words to matter to those on down the line.
 

How do you feel landscaping impacts patient care?

When you walk into a healthcare facility and see landscaping and grounds that are unkempt, I really think it makes you question the quality of care that’s being offered to patients on the inside. Landscaping is an integral part of patient care. When a patient is sitting up in a hospital room and they can look out the window and see flowers in bloom and green grass, that can take their spirit to a higher level and it’s a proven fact that nature has healing properties. Presenting stellar landscaping at healthcare facilities is critical to bringing people into the facility. They see the meticulous, careful, beautiful way we care for the building and the grounds, and that gives them faith that they’re going to be lovingly cared for in the facility.