An engineer by trade, Pragya Chaurasia spent nearly two decades in the corporate world before deciding that she wanted her career to mean something more than the numbers in her bank account.
“I think at a certain point you start reassessing your priorities and where you want to steer your life. I asked myself, ‘How do you make the most of it?” says Chaurasia. After bopping around from state to state (and the Netherlands) every two years, Chaurasia, her husband, and young daughter started looking for a permanent home on the East Coast.
She decided on Richmond because of the city’s manageable size, decent weather and a new opportunity: purchasing and rehabbing an extant business, Yours Truly, In Home Care.
Chaurasia zeroed in on healthcare because, while she’s not a doctor she says, she has ample operations and business management experience. “With healthcare it was almost an instant gratification,” she notes. “You can really see where you’re making an impact.”
Since she took over in 2018, Yours Truly has grown its client base from 30 to 90-plus, and currently employs more than 100 people, 90% of them being women of color. “By investing in employees we’ve been able to expand our client base,” she adds.
As of last year, Yours Truly’s director of nursing offers training in-house for anyone interested in started a healthcare career, even those with zero experience. “It’s a great entry level job for a lot of people to require the skillset and training to become future CNAs,” says Chaurasia.
She adds that Yours Truly provides integral health services to the most vulnerable population, but it also provides services as simple as companionship: “There are times when people have no one who lives with them and they need that kind of support.”
As for the future of the business, Chaurasia says she plans to optimize and streamline Yours Truly to be replicable so that they can expand their operations. “I want to be able to give access to more people who need these services,” she says.