Today we’d like to introduce you to Renee Stretz.
Hi Renee , it’s an honor to have you on the platform. Thanks for taking the time to share your story with us – to start maybe you can share some of your backstory with our readers?
In 2011, I was in school, struggling financially, and raising a newborn along with my daughter from a previous relationship. My fiancé had just returned from Afghanistan, and the man who came home was not the one who had left. PTSD made him abusive, withdrawn, and bitter. We separated not long after his enlistment ended. My ex left for Arizona when our baby was just four months old, and I moved home to help take care of my father.
I was trying to finish school, raise two small children, work, emotionally support my mother, care for my father, grieve a relationship that had fallen apart, and my father’s diagnosis, small cell lung cancer, all at the same time.
My father continued to decline. He responded well to his first few rounds of chemotherapy, but when his doctors told him he needed more, he said no. He came to me first, before anyone else, and told me he wanted hospice. I was the youngest of his children and his only daughter.
He wanted to be home, not in a hospital. He wanted to smoke his cigarettes and drink his Jack Daniel’s. My father was done with the treatments that made his thick, salt-and-pepper hair brittle and fall out, and that stripped fifty pounds from his frame. My father, Ed, tried to explain his decision to my mother, but she cried and begged him to keep fighting. I intervened. I asked her to let him choose, to support him, because these were his decisions to make, not ours. This took several conversations.
By then I was in an MBA program, working as hard as I could to build a better life for my children and myself.
The conversation that changed everything; I was talking with my father’s hospice liaison one day, the woman helping him navigate this decision, when she said something that changed the course of my life: “I think you should work in hospice. You get it.”
I had never once considered healthcare, let alone hospice, as a career. But she was right. I did get it. I understood the quality-of-life piece, the discipline of supporting someone even when every fiber of you wants them to keep fighting. I learned that wanting someone to fight is not selfish, and neither is honoring their choice not to. Loving someone means honoring their life and their decisions, even when those decisions break your heart.
I started talking with my dad about the idea. By then, he had an incredible hospice team, and he seemed more at ease than he had been in years. He believed I could help a lot of people. He saw the misconceptions everywhere, about quality of life, about hospice, about the red tape that kept people from using a benefit they’d already earned. Long before it became common conversation, my father was skeptical of how much money healthcare companies made, whether they treated a patient or didn’t.
My father spent ten months on hospice, receiving the full benefit of that care. His home health aide and his chaplain became his best friends. His aide would spend hours debating politics and religion with him, and if she wasn’t working, he wouldn’t let anyone else come that day. I believe she made him feel alive, which is what hospice is actually about: living. She never pitied him. She treated him as an equal, with dignity and respect, and gave him a piece of her mind whenever he was being cranky or unkind. She was an angel.
Around this time, I changed schools and began a new MBA program with a specialization in healthcare administration. I lost my father during my very first semester.
That same week, I planned his funeral and finished a fifty-page paper. My professor offered me a four-day extension, telling me my work ethic was inspiring and that she was willing to simply pass me given how much I’d already completed. I turned her down. I have always believed in earning what I receive, and I wanted to finish it properly. Looking back, I think part of why I pushed through was selfish in its own way; the work gave me somewhere to put everything I was feeling after losing him.
I worked full-time while finishing school, and money was tight. One year, my daughter’s school sent home a ham for Thanksgiving and told me, “Your family won a Thanksgiving ham.” It was a kind gesture, one that let me keep my pride intact. Little did they know, I never had pride wrapped up in things like that. I was building a life for my children, and if someone wanted to help me do it, I accepted gratefully.
I graduated in 2016 and started my hospice career. I loved every part of it, meeting with referral sources, doctors, and families who needed guidance during the hardest moments of their lives. My cup was full. I was helping people navigate the same impossible position I had once been in with my father, while also supporting my own family. I succeeded because I genuinely loved and believed in hospice. I was passionate about helping patients find their path forward, and I loved just as much helping families find peace and acceptance.
Within eighteen months, I was promoted into a leadership role. A few years later, one of the largest home care companies in the world recruited me as a director. From there, I moved to one of the largest hospice companies in the country, eventually leading as many as seven hospice offices. Leadership meant giving up daily contact with patients, and I miss that more than almost anything. But I hold onto the knowledge that because of that work, more people gained access to the gift of hospice.
I built the early years of my career at national and international healthcare companies, and I’m grateful for that experience. But becoming Vice President of Business Development at Grace Healthcare Services has been the most meaningful chapter of my career. Grace shares my philosophy of putting patients and families first. As our President and CEO, Mary Andreano, says, “We do the right thing by patients every day.” That is exactly how I want to spend my time in hospice.
Our goal is to be the largest resource for hospice in the state of New Jersey. When you think about hospice, when you’re facing a life-limiting diagnosis, when you have a question about advance care planning, and you live in New Jersey, I want Grace to be the name that comes to mind. We hire for clinical excellence, for culture, and for what we call the hospice heart. We take a holistic approach to care, not just in principle but in practice; patients stay at the center of every leadership conversation we have. Grace is more than a company. It’s a feeling. It’s support. It’s giving patients strength during the hardest conversations of their lives.
My happily ever after:
I am happily married to my husband, James McAteer, my best friend and incredible partner, and together we have five children. Things worked out exactly how they were meant to. Working for what you want is the journey itself, and if you set your mind to it, whether in your career or your personal life, you can achieve it. It comes down to one thing: perseverance.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
There were many lumps and bumps along the way, there were money struggles, I couldn’t afford books, I was taking care of my parents during the hardest time of their marriage.
Thanks – so what else should our readers know about Grace Healthcare Services, llc?
Grace was started 20 years ago by five like-minded women, who believed hospice care could be more, if it was completely patient focused, if we hired the right people, and if we met folks where they were in their journey we could support them best… Grace is bold, I have worked in hospice for quite some time now, I have not worked anywhere like Grace, we reinvest in our patients, other companies spend a lot on marketing dollars, we spend those same dollars on our patients getting extra time, support, and attention.
My company looks at each patient as an individual, and we do our best to go the extra mile, while still adhering to our guidelines and regulatory standard.
Most proud of this brand, it was actually created to patients first, not bottom lines; this company was created to set an example of what a hospice program should be if we could take all the best ideas, complimentary therapies, and find the absolute best people in the field and put that all together.
You will not find a leadership team, or hospice company more committed to walking patients’ home at the end of life with dignity and compassion.
Where we are in life is often partly because of others. Who/what else deserves credit for how your story turned out?
Mary Andreano, is my latest of strong hospice leaders, mentors and supporters, she is the Grace hospice CEO, and President. Like many of my mentors she is a nurse, and I learn from her leadership and support everyday. Mary gives me confidence to give some of my bolder ideas a shot. I like best, that she will disagree with me openly and directly, I think that is great leadership.
Melanie Mayor, was a nurse, and my business development director, I learned so much from her about leadership. She called me one time, I was clearly struggling, around 2017, and she said, “whats going on with you?” Before I knew it, I spit out a 45 minute dissertation on why my personal life was a mess, (cliffs notes) I had a boyfriend, and I was feeling guilt for not spending every free second with my children.”
Mel said, “ok, do you feel better,?” after giving me some much-needed objective intervention, I said, “I think so.” She then told me to make a choice, finish my day and do it well, or go home, and start tomorrow fresh. I worked, but I learned, leading people is not always about metrics, sometimes it needs to be about the people. I am a people first leader because of Mel Mayor, she taught me that through the 4 years she was my leader, sometimes people just need to get it out.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.gracehcs.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/gracehealthcareservices
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/gracehealthcare
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/grace-healthcare-services
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@gracehealthcareservices
- Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/grace-healthcare-services-edison-2
