Meet Juanita.  Juanita is our Head of Human Resources and has been with ServiceMaster by Deeland for eleven years.  This week we are finding out a bit more about her, and why she is our very own ‘Jason Bourne’! 

Juanita started her career working as an office administrator for a forklift truck company and then went on to be secretary to the MD of a Mercedes Benz dealership in Pangbourne.  While she was there she met her then husband who was in the army and they were posted to Dusseldorf, where she lived for 18 months.  Necessity made her start to learn German as she realised people in the shops would ignore her if she tried to speak English!  As her language skills improved she started working for the Ministry of Defence in a communications unit on the army base. 

After her return to the UK she went to work for a slip ring manufacturer and that is when she first started working in HR after training and studying to become CIPD qualified.  She moved to a commercial real estate developer and started working closely with their Health & Safety teams at big shopping centre developments like West Quay and The Oracle.  Her lifelong love of dance  was inspired by her grandad teaching her ballroom dancing on his feet.  This led her to meet her second husband, Steve, at a ‘Ginger Jive’ lesson, cemented by a follow up Ceroc class! 

Her next move was to ServiceMaster by Deeland, arriving as HR Assistant and rising to become, several years later, our Head of HR.  Juanita has always had a ‘let’s try it’ attitude to life and this has inspired a parachute jump, a gliding flight and hot air ballooning amongst her achievements.  She and Steve now have 4 adult children and 5 grandchildren between them.  ‘Nana’ is a new codename for her…slightly different to that she had in Germany many years ago! 

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