Vanessa Terra Bossart, is a Brazilian Business CEO founder of Sparkling Clean Pro, Sparkling Clean Agency and Green Living Cleaning Supplies.
She has worked over 16 years as a social worker for the Bay Area’s local immigrant community, empowering the Latinx and ‘Women at Risk’ communities. She has employed over 800 families, helping them create their own financial independence.
She is an ecological advocate and a Consultant for other business’s (cleaning and beyond) on developing a GREEN based company model. She is dedicated to the most innovative strategies for ecological cleaning and is an active participant of world-wide conferences on the latest cutting-edge research and technologies for toxic waste & carbon imprint reduction within the Cleaning Industry.
Vanessa’s Story on Sparkling Clean:
I founded Sparkling Clean Agency in 2005. My company is not only my business, but also my community, my priorities in life and also a family to me. A lot more goes behind the story of my company than meets the eye.
I come from São Paulo Brazil and my Academic background is in Business and Marketing. I moved to the US to do community work within the large Brazilian Immigrant population of the Bay Area. I taught at ESL English for newly arrived immigrants, and became deeply involved within the community and in the lives of my students. Many of them were cleaners working free-lance or employed by various Bay Area Cleaning Services. My students turned to me for advice and asked me to help them with the ins-and-outs of managing their cleaning schedules.
My students not only earned very little money beforehand but also didn’t have the language skills or business know-how to branch out on their own. They supported me building Sparkling Clean in partnership with them. It was a win-win situation for us all.
I have always believed in local-run businesses, and here was my opportunity to start my own. I wanted to do it the right way, and saw the opportunity to push my personal beliefs on ecological responsibility and help promote an eco-friendly living. At the time, the concept of ‘eco-friendly’ was not nearly as common-place, especially not in the cleaning industry. “Clean” by definition meant using lots of bleach and harsh chemicals to remove ‘natural’ dirt, and eco-friendly cleaning was not quite taken seriously. It was associated with using baking soda as an all-purpose cleaner, and generally thought of as ineffective.
To me, however, green living and cleaning went hand in hand. If I wanted a healthy lifestyle, I needed a healthy body and a healthy home, and to incorporate the green concept into all areas of my life. I buy organic food, I use natural materials for my clothes and home, and I prevent at all costs infecting my home with toxic chemicals. This concern has only grown further after I became a mother to two young children. These principles have always been at the forefront of how I was raised, how I live my life, and what I have passed on to my children and those around me. I am proud to have incorporated these principals in my life as in my business, to help form a Future world with ecological responsibility.
When I built my business model, it was important to me that my cleaners felt empowered and that they could grow their own client list and establish their sense of work responsibility. For this reason Sparkling Clean, has a healthy boss-worker hierarchy system where the company role is to train, book, bridge client-worker communication and supervise the work quality of cleaners. This model has proved its absolute efficiency over the years. It has reduced the cost for clients, and has developed trust, reliability and responsibility between the company and the cleaners. We now have 29 teams of cleaners that we refer all over the Bay Area, serving over 350 clients on a regular schedule.
As my business has grown, so has the community and the Sparking Clean Family. I’ve known many of the workers from my ESL days, and over the years, I have come to know their families as well. I am grateful to be able to support my native community and spread the importance of living a non-toxic green life. We now regularly teach free ESL English classes to every cleaner we refer, and I am happy knowing that while working very hard, they are not exposed to daily chemical toxins anymore. Even though the green concept has exploded in popularity over recent years, I feel proud knowing that our company has been committed to its ecological core principals since its early beginning. The company developed an expertise on the green cleaning industry, and through much experience and years of research on the cutting edge discoveries of green cleaning, We are confident on the best products and methods for your home, pets and children. Our clients appreciate this and many have been with us from the very start.