Holly Steele could have taken the comfortable path, making some key investments and playing it safe. But that’s not the typical path to becoming a titan. Today, Steele is CEO and managing partner of GavinHeath because she opted out of the safe route.
“The reality is, I had much higher aspirations, both personally and professionally,” Steele said. “In the last three decades, I’ve built and helped run several different types of businesses, from data analytics, medical auditing and charge recovery, consumer protection/advocacy, [and] operating my own retail store to serving in the media as on-air talent.
“However, with each of those endeavors, there was always the caveat of having done so with the support of another partner, or the notion someone else was credited for my success (a sad reality many women deal with on a daily basis). GavinHeath was my opportunity to utilize every ounce of the collective business knowledge I’ve gathered in my career and take a risk to build something of my own … to build the future I want, not just for myself, but also for my family.”
GavinHeath is a search-and-solutions firm headquartered in Centennial, Colorado. It is dual-certified as a Woman-Owned Small Business and a Women Business Enterprise through the Women’s Business Enterprise National Council.
Steel founded the company with a mission to provide staffing solutions and connect people, businesses and communities. GavinHeath provides temporary personnel, temp-to-hire employees and direct-hire employees. GavinHeath was initially founded as an information technology staffing provider, so the firm’s core expertise is in the IT arena.
In the last few years, Steele has worked to build the GavinHeath brand through grassroots efforts, and the company has been recognized with several awards. In 2022 alone, it was named a Colorado Company to Watch, voted Best Staffing Company in Colorado by public voting, named one of North America’s Best Staffing Companies to Work For and was a finalist for ColoradoBiz’s Top Company Awards and the Denver Business Journal’s Small Business Awards.
“I believe the brand recognition played an enormous hand in recruiting exceptional talent to the GavinHeath team,” Steele said.
“My people are the most valuable asset I have as a leader. The collective sum of their individual differences, life experiences, knowledge, inventiveness, innovation, self-expression, unique capabilities and talents represents a significant part of our company’s culture and the way we conduct business. I want GavinHeath to be more than a ‘tick of the box’ as a woman-owned business, and instead be a force of change in the staffing industry and beyond.”
