Jacqueline Davis – 24 Hour Home Care

Jacqueline Davis knows the power of investing in oneself.

From the moment she was accepted into college, she had to decide whether to pursue higher education despite the financial burden of completing a bachelor’s degree. Her grandfather encouraged her to believe in herself and her worth.

“He believed education was the one concrete thing a person can obtain in this world,” Davis says. “This belief became a guiding principle in my life and future career.”

Jacqueline Davis | Chief Financial Officer and Chief Operating Officer
| 24 Hour Home Care

This has been illustrated throughout her life, including in how she worked full time in college and graduated summa cum laude with a Bachelor of Science in accounting.

Twenty years later, her work ethic and passion led her to 24 Hour Home Care, where she’s chief financial officer and chief operating officer. Founded in 2008, the business provides in-home care for seniors and people with disabilities in California, Arizona and Texas.

Fresh perspective

Although Davis hadn’t imagined herself outside of the corporate world, she made the jump to 24 Hour Home Care in 2016 after meeting the co-founders, David Allerby and Ryan Iwamoto, and resonating with their mission.

As the company’s first executive not promoted from within, she took the role knowing she wanted to learn about the industry, develop a high-performance finance team and share her expertise with the leadership team.

“My outside perspective and corporate background have allowed me to build upon the skills of the co-founders and capitalize on my difference in perspective,” she says.

Davis is most proud of implementing financial discipline, advocating for an improvement in structure and process (related to budgeting, financial planning and analysis and data integrity, among other things), and “utilizing business intelligence to drive decision making.”

Although she enjoys sharing her ideas and perspectives, Davis says she’s learned just as much from “Team 24,” including the value of group collaboration, the positive impact of a strong culture and having a focused company mission. She says Allerby and Iwamoto have been instrumental in her growth and success and that she appreciates their dedication to advocating for women, who make up 85 percent of the company.

“24 Hour Home Care has fostered my love of mentoring both for myself and others,” Davis says. “I feel that I’ve grown immensely both personally and professionally.”

COVID response

The onset of the COVID-19 pandemic created new challenges for Team 24, which inspired Davis to continue to focus on streamlined communication despite the shift to remote work. She also shifted her focus to caregiver and client safety. She consulted an infectious disease doctor to advise on safety protocols to ensure proper measures were created.

“We had to be a little scrappy, which wouldn’t have been possible in a corporate environment,” she says. “We all came together and divided and conquered to address this quickly.”

According to Davis, Team 24 caregivers have worked more than 800,000 hours throughout the pandemic providing support to families and seniors. They aided in the transition to online learning for families with children experiencing developmental disabilities. They’ve also provided care to clients who’ve tested positive for COVID-19, with less than 1 percent of caregivers and clients contracting the virus. Davis credits this to 24 Hour Home Care’s strong safety protocols and high vaccination rate of over 95 percent.

“All of my experience with corporate companies has prepared me for stressful situations, but COVID is a whole other type of crisis,” Davis says. “It was a team effort where everyone galvanized behind one mission to provide quality care for seniors and young people with developmental disabilities and improve their lives.”

Finding her why

Working for a company with a strong mission has been important to Davis. She says everyone at 24 Hour Home Care has a “why,” with hers being her grandfather.

Davis had to make the difficult decision to move her grandmother into an assisted living facility when she developed severe dementia, which required her grandfather to give up his home to be with her. She says losing the independence of being in his home caused depression and loneliness. This experience, while emotionally difficult, has made working for 24 Hour Home Care even more special, she says.

“Caring for a loved one is incredibly personal and complex,” she says. “My personal experience has helped guide my decisions in developing a company that prioritizes compassion.”

Helping people is important to Davis, but she’s never wanted to limit her impact to the corporate world. She serves on the board of EmpowHER Institute, a Los Angeles-based nonprofit that helps young girls of color gain the confidence and skills to pursue the colleges and careers of their dreams. Davis says this work allows her to encourage girls and women to take chances on themselves and believe in their worth just as her grandfather taught her.

“Girls need to see the value of investing in themselves and in their education,” she says. “It shouldn’t be the mindset of any young girl that she’s not good enough.”

Davis says she wouldn’t be where she is today without the support and faith of her grandfather as well as her family and friends. She says this has pushed her to new heights in her career. This year she was named a Los Angeles Large Private Company CFO of the Year by the Los Angeles Business Journal.

“I’m going to continue to work to make the world better for the next generation, both in my business strategies and my passion for female advocacy,” Davis says. “I’ll continue to focus on the growth and betterment of 24 Hour Home Care and work alongside the board of EmpowHER to uplift women of color to achieve great success.”