Welcome to another episode of Inspiring Women, the podcast that celebrates the stories of extraordinary women from all walks of life. I am your host, Betty Collins. Join us for an inspiring conversation that will leave you ready to take on the world. So today on Inspiring Women, we are in the midst of kind of a theme of women who scale and how do they scale and how do they get there. And sometimes all we do is we look at women who are already there and like, they never had to scale. They never had to go through this process to get there. Right. I haven't always been the Betty Collins as I call myself or I haven't always been a shareholder.

I have always, you know, there's all those things that people think, this is what I've done my entire life. It's like, no, I had to scale. I had to scale up like most people that have that success in their life and they realize that if you go straight up a hill, you'll be tired. If you go through a nice period paced way to go, you will make it further and you'll do more. So we're going to talk to some women today who have scaled. These are women who are big deals, certainly in central Ohio and even beyond. Really, they're going to talk a little bit about their story and being a visionary and scaling as they have. So we're going to kind of emphasize a little more of the visionary today because we just the three of us, and I'll let them introduce themselves in a minute.

We, we all were nominees for NAWBO Columbus's Visionary Awards. And that's a big deal in Columbus because NAWBO is a big deal. I cannot emphasize enough. If you're in anywhere in the US and there's a NAWBO group and you're a businesswoman owner, you need to go and join. But NAWBO Columbus has always done and really honored visionaries. And so we're going to talk today what it meant to be part of that as well as what it took to be the visionary. And you know, everyone has a different definition. At first I was going to look up in the Webster's Dictionary what's visionary? And then I said, no, what's visionary? What's a visionary according to Betty Collins.

So I look at it as somebody who has an ability to see, right? And they see something that they either want to do or who they want to be or what impact they want to have in their world or in their industry, etc. So I look at someone who can see it, but it really goes further than that because if someone who not just sees what they want to do, it's. They actually make it a reality, that to me is a visionary. That to me is the person that is that person. And not all of us are visionaries, you know, not all of us are visionaries. So there's really two type of people we're going to talk to today. We're going to talk to two visionaries. We're also going to talk about supporting the visionary.

So you're either the visionary or you're supporting that vision coming to reality. And both roles are as important as the other, because if the visionary has to do everything herself or himself, they're probably not going to make it happen. So there has to be those people around you that go, I'm into the vision and I'm going to support this vision that that's going on. And we'll talk about that a little bit today. So I'm going to have them introduce themselves. I'll have Jill Fry go first from Cummins, and she can Talk about your 32nd, who you are and what you.

Thanks.

First of all, I just want to say thank you, Betty. You're a mentor to me and I love you dearly. And you always set me on my true north, my path, and I'm grateful for you for that.

But I take your energy and then I use it. So you're good.

I'm Jill Fry and I am president and CEO of Cummins Facility Services. We are a national janitorial company. Right now, we're international. So super fun about that. Let's see. I've been in this company for. The company's been alive for 53 years. I've been working for 25.

My parents started it about five years ago. I started in technology. So I have my little bracelet on. I started a global consortium called Facility Data Standard that enables your building to talk. So buildings are starting to talk. We're using a lot of technology to enable buildings to talk. And so that is my vision and that's my dream. But we.

We sling mops and we clean things, but hopefully we'll have robots slinging mops.

Doing more of that. Yes.

Thank you.

And you haven't always been this huge company with robots and technology. We have a long way to talk about your vision.

Yeah. We started in one town.

Yep.

In Marion, Ohio.

Yep.

Yep.

And now you're everywhere.

Now we're everywhere in Canada. And so it's been a really fun journey and a great dream.

Right. So Jill and I do a lot of things together. And so when we both realized we were both being nominated for Nabo, we were kind of laughing. Then we ended up being in the top three. But the winner of the Navo 2025 is Purva. And Purva, you have such a story and you have such a man. What a path you've gone and made such impact. So tell us a little bit about you.