2020 Employee of the Year award recipients

As everyone knows, 2020 was a different year from most! Even though we weren’t able to get together to celebrate at our annual post-holiday party, we still want to take a moment to recognize our amazing employees.

Every year we honor employees who go above and beyond with CEO of the year awards. This year, the two owners distributed the awards – founder and CEO Dr. Mary Ann Shallcross Smith and Ronald Smith.

Congratulations to our 2020 award recipients!

Dominique Cayo (DDC Pawtucket Thornley St.): CEO Team Member of the Year
Laurie Gorman (Home Office): CEO Executive Team Member of the Year

Each winner receives a check for $500 and 5 days PTO.  Congratulations and thank you for your hard work!

Dominique has been the Lead School Age Teacher at Dr. Day Care Pawtucket Thornley St. since we opened in March 2016 (previously Pawtucket Day center). When Mary Ann and Amy asked for nominations and feedback, Dominique’s center Administrator, Matt, explained why he felt Dominique earned this honor:

Dominique is someone that is strongly relied upon at DDC Pawtucket Thornley center.  He runs a structured school age classroom where children are exposed to a wide range of activities, including coding, robotics, yoga, gaming, and poetry.  In this classroom, student interest truly leads the curriculum, and Dominique will advocate for the children to have access to any supplies necessary to their learning.  During distance learning, Dominique has helped to structure a dozen different schedules in his room, made relationships with the children’s teachers, and has been a partner with parents to make sure their children have what they need to learn.  Before COVID, he had the children take responsibility for the recycling in our center, teaching the importance of active participation in taking care of our school community.  The students in his class plant vegetables in our garden, and build their own equipment to use in our playground.  He truly pushes child literacy, cultivating a library where any child can find a book to interest them.  Dominique has read entire series of books so that student would have someone to talk with about these books, getting them excited by their learning.

Laurie Gorman has been with the Dr. Day Care/Kids Klub/Therapeutic Child Care Services home office since October 2, 2017 as the Human Resources Director. We are proud to have her on our team and she is so deserving of this honor.

2020 was a challenging year and sitting in the HR seat was probably one of the most challenging and Laurie handled the responsibility well.  She was constantly updating leadership on new COVID HR policies, keeping in touch with employees during the shutdown, integral in bringing employees back to work when we reopened and doubled her administrative duties during this time.  Laurie never said she could not do it and kept at it until the job was done and done well. None of us have ever experienced working during a pandemic and the support Laurie gave to all from the HR perspective was vital in keeping the organization moving forward to get us to the other side of the unknown.

Previous award recipients include:

CEO Team Member of the Year

CEO Executive Team Member of the Year

Longevity Awards

Each year we also celebrate employees who have been with us for 5, 10, 15, 20+ years with our organization! We are grateful to have you here! Each employee receives $5 per year of service:

We would also take a moment to recognize our most recently hired employee, Ally Rosenfeld who started with us on 01/06/2021!

(most recently hired as of the typical holiday party date of 01/08/2021)