Leading with Love: Te'Aira Mallory's Mission to Redefine Care
- 1 day ago
- 4 min read
When sitting down for a job interview with Te’Aira Mallory, your years of experience aren't her top priority. What she’s looking for is something far more innate and harder to teach: genuine compassion.
Te’Aira has been working with the Intellectual and Developmental Disability (IDD) community for over 24 years, but her connection goes deeper than professional experience. She grew up with an uncle and nephew with developmental delays, seeing firsthand how the IDD community was overlooked, mistreated, and neglected. Those experiences ignited her with a deep sense of responsibility to make sure no one goes without compassionate care. After years of advocating for this community, Te’Aira knew she couldn’t sit around and wait for change – she had to create it herself. “I know my heart,” she explained. “I know they need me just as much as I need them. Sometimes you just need someone to understand you.”
Enter Foundations Total Care, founded in 2024, Mallory’s way of providing personalized healthcare support to all people, from newborns to seniors. For Foundations, it’s all in the name — they provide total care, whether that’s behavioral health, laundry, or dog walking.
At the heart of the company is a willingness to go above and beyond for their clients, all of whom feel like family. Under Te’Aira’s leadership, Foundations Total Care has blossomed into a truly safe space for all their clients to get the help they need beyond the company’s typical services. Te’Aira has gone to the homes of their IDD clients to help with home remodeling, replacing their old furniture with new to “give them the life they deserve.” And when a recent snowstorm buried homes in over 7 inches of snow, Mallory thought of her elderly and low mobility clients and paid to have their driveways plowed. That strong leadership inspires Mallory’s team, showing both employees and clients what it means to be a part of Foundations Total Care.
The ones lucky enough to have found Te’Aira are profoundly grateful for the work she does. Clients call her their “guardian angel,” FaceTime her, and tell her, “When I pass, I want you to be my child’s guardian.”
"I ask God all the time,Whoever needs to see me, whoever needs to be in my care, give them to me. Make the path clear. It’s extremely rewarding when you see them cry because they finally found the right caregiver, the right agency."
To build a business from this philosophy, you need the right people — technical skills matter, but heart is non‑negotiable. Mallory is intentional about surrounding her clients with a curated team of caregivers that embody patience and genuine connection.“How would you feel if you sat on that other side?” she asked. “I teach a lot of my employees not to look at the world in our way, but instead look at it from their view and their lens.”
Mallory has high standards for her employees, but truly works to take care of them both in and outside of Foundations. The company pays at the top scale for home health agencies so her team can live off the work they do. "We don't want our employees coming home and thinking, ‘How are we going to pay our rent?’ or ‘How are we going to put food on the table?’” If employees are struggling, Mallory works to help out in any way she can — because caring for people shouldn’t come at a cost.
This culture of compassion resonates with everyone that crosses paths with Foundations, and it’s what’s allowed Mallory’s company to grow as exponentially as it has. Originally only servicing Dayton, Foundations Total Care now provides compassionate care to all 88 counties in Ohio.
Mallory had been thinking of Foundations well before she opened her business. As a self-starter, she had money saved, a business plan, and the works. But independent as she was, Te’Aira knew there were always new ways to grow.
She started her journey with ECDI by dipping her toe into marketing classes and business management training for her feminine hygiene business. “I always tell people, we don’t know everything,” Mallory shared. “I’m open to learning because that’s how I grow. So, I enjoy all the trainings, seminars, conferences — I try to do all of them.”
But when it came to taking out a loan to support Foundations, Te’Aira was admittedly hesitant. She worried that asking for help would counteract all the hard work she’d done to grow her business, a mindset that her mentors worked to break her out of.
“I had a lot of people asking me, ‘What are you doing? You need to do a business loan!’”
She knew that she could do it all herself— but Te’Aira eventually realized that didn't mean she had to. She decided to apply for a loan to support payroll for Foundations, a decision that benefited her employees and, in turn, her company’s growth.
“Any entrepreneur that has succeeded had someone that got them where they needed to be.”
On her visit to Cincinnati, Te’Aira was welcomed with open arms. She connected with ECDI and the Women’s Business Center, where the staff helped her strengthen and streamline key areas of her business. Whether it was utilizing the equipment in the WBC Resource Lab or helping her improve her business plan, the member resources Te’Aira took advantage of helped put her independent mind at ease. Nowadays, Mallory even sends some of her employees to ECDI training courses to develop their leadership skills.
“Even if you’re not ready now, ECDI can always get you where you need to be. I truly believe that out of all the companies that offer assistance or mentorship, ECDI is genuinely committed to helping you grow.”
Looking ahead, Foundations Total Care has big plans for the future. They plan to open an adult day program by the summer of 2026, as well as a behavioral health clinic within the year. And to Te’Aira, that success is only possible because she invested in herself and her business.
“If you want someone to take you seriously, you have to take yourself seriously first,” Mallory explained. “Becoming a WBC member really shows that you’re taking yourself seriously.”
