BUILDING SERVICE PROVIDER HITS THE (WHITE) SPOT
Published by Melissa Mitchell
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aula Lestinho learned about hard work and gratification from her parents. Growing up in Portugal and arriving in Canada in her early teens, she had to learn a new language and culture and overcome the challenges that come with that. Years of helping her parents clean commercial offices every evening for extra income sparked her entrepreneurial drive to create an outside-the-box cleaning company with an amazing reputation and unique way of doing business. To make this happen, after graduating from Father Lacombe High School she enrolled in the business management program at S.A.I.T. and in 1992, she launched her own cleaning business, White Spot Janitorial, now celebrating 30 years in business. Being an owner in an industry dominated by men, Lestinho brought something new to the market. Potential clients liked the idea of a woman looking after their cleaning needs. Starting out, she wore multiple hats. She handled business development, human resources and supervising, as well as executing day-to-day tasks on top of being a mother and wife. She worked hard and proved herself in the marketplace. As her reputation for quality grew, so did her business. Now she employs more than 200 people serving more than 75 valued clients with services in day, evening and weekend shifts cleaning over 10 million square feet of space every week.
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Paula Lestinho. Photo by Riverwood Photography.
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