Isis with Hisway Painting owners, Bud and Eileen Zegel
We are featuring one of our valued employees today, Lead Painter Isis Silverio. Isis has been with Hisway Painting for almost two years, and we have seen seen her grow immensely as an employee and as a person. She was hired as an assistant in 2017 to learn all aspects of the business, and through lots of hard work and training, she was recently promoted to a Lead Painter and Administrator. Isis has also been taking English classes at Hisway Painting, and we have seen her communication skills improve rapidly. She now manages large painting jobs, leads the customers through all stages of the painting process, drives her own company truck with all equipment and supplies, supervises a small crew and coordinates schedules while carrying the job to completion. She continues to get excellent reviews from customers for her communication, work ethic, and leadership skills.
Isis was born in the Dominican Republic in a blended family with five brothers and five sisters. Her parents split up when she was 3, but she still has a good relationship with them both, and is especially close to her mother and sisters. She came to the United States in 2012 on a student visa with a Volleyball scholarship to Freed – Hardeman University in Henderson, TN. Three years into her education, because of a misunderstanding about playing for another volleyball team, she ended up losing her scholarship. She knew she couldn’t afford to pay for tuition on her own. She was devastated, but went to a student bible study with a friend that night and started talking to an older woman. The woman asked about Isis’s story, and deeply touched, she went home that night and talked to her husband.
Isis is very close with her mother, Librada Méndez
The woman and her husband (Mary Lane and Paul Schwartz) came back to her a few days later and offered to help. They said if she worked very hard in school, and continued to study Scripture and to stay in community, they would cover the cost of her tuition, and even let her move in with them for a year so that she could focus on her studies. Isis became close to the family and excelled, and in 2016, she successfully graduated with a degree in Business Administration.
Isis came to us as a friend through an employee who knew her, and we sat down and had a long talk with her. We asked her what her plans were for her future, and how she wanted to use her degree. She told us her story, and we saw how hard she worked to get to this country and to stay here and finish her studies, and we knew she was special from the beginning. We were impressed with her passion to contribute to the workforce and her community in the United States as well as her courage to pursue a better life.
Isis and Daymari Brito, her best friend graduating from Freed-Hardeman University. They met in Miami when coming to the United States, played on the same volleyball team, and supported eachother through many hardships. Daymari is now married with a child, and they are Isis’s closest friends in the US.
When Isis graduated from college, many of her friends in the International community at Freed - Hardeman had to leave the country after graduation. She made close friends who worked hard to try and obtain a permit to work in the United States, but ultimately had to go back to Africa, Brazil, Central America, and Korea. Isis felt honored to be pursuing an education in the United States, and while she loved the Dominican Republic, she knew she would like to have an opportunity to get permission to obtain employment and serve in a professional capacity. Isis communicated to us her values and dreams, and we worked with her and a local Immigration attorney to help her pursue employment and begin her post-graduate professional work here. Isis was granted a work permit to stay for another three years as she learned the painting business and entered the workforce.
Isis, her best friend Daymari, and Mary Lane and Paul Schwartz, who became close family friends and helped Isis finish her education
A lifelong athlete, when Isis is not working with Hisway Painting, she loves fitness and enjoys going to the gym several times a week. She says it makes her feel renewed, and without it she feels unhappy and lazy. She is an avid reader and follows a couple of Hispanic television shows to relax. She is a gifted entrepreneur, and is interested in starting a small online retail business for women’s clothing and cosmetics with some friends. Her goal with Hisway Painting is to advance in the company on the management end, to be able to perform estimates, to sell painting jobs to customers and to help run the business.
We love having Isis on the team at Hisway Painting – and have enjoyed seeing her growth over the past two years. She has developed in confidence and assertiveness, and holds her own in a mostly male crew that works long hours in tough conditions. We are thankful for the way that she embodies Hisway Painting’s mission to serve, impact, and transform, and how she represents the business as her own. She is honest about life’s hardships, but teaches us so much in her gratitude for every gift she has been given, and her insistence on finding the good in people and in situations. She is thankful for relationships, for her job, and for the life she was given. We love that she is comfortable in her own skin, and is animated and fun and brings so much personality and joy to our team.
We celebrate Isis today, for all her hard work, her contribution to this business and the community around her, and all that she has overcome to be here. We give thanks to God for His faithfulness in her life and for bringing her to us.