Dani DePetrillo, COO of Right at Home Canada, combines entrepreneurial spirit with social purpose to create growth
By Roma Ihnatowycz
When it came to choosing a career, Dani DePetrillo bucked the family trend. Her father was an oncological surgeon, her stepmom an OBGYN, and her brother a family doctor, but instead of a medical career, DePetrillo set her sights on building her own business. “I was always an entrepreneur—I always loved thinking about business ideas and tossing them around with my dad, who despite being a surgeon, is also very entrepreneurial,” she says.
DePetrillo did, however, settle on a business that operates in the healthcare sphere. She is the COO of Right at Home Canada, a company dedicated to providing a range of home care services to seniors and others in need—everything from basic chores and companionship to more complex health services like nursing care and hospice support.
It’s an apt choice for someone who grew up surrounded by doctors caring for their patients, often in their biggest time of need. One of her father’s most valuable lessons, says DePetrillo, was “to really stop and listen to the human in front of you.”
This personal approach to building and running a business is something that DePetrillo has carried with her ever since she launched her very first business—a small tour company bringing Japanese travelers to Canada. She had just graduated from McMaster University in Hamilton with a degree in Japanese language, so it was a good fit. “We offered boutique tours for people who didn’t want to get on an enormous tour bus and go to Niagara Falls. Instead, we took them to places like Algonquin Park,” DePetrillo says.
Running the tour company gave DePetrillo some global experience, primarily in the form of attending trade shows in Japan. More importantly, it gave her a taste of business ownership and affirmed her decision to build on this moving forward. Eventually she sold that business and went on to own four interdisciplinary rehabilitation centres in the Greater Toronto Area that provided physiotherapy, chiropractic, acupuncture, and other services under one roof. She ran the centres for 15 years, fine-tuning her skills in managing teams in the private healthcare field.
A golden opportunity
Her previous experience positioned DePetrillo well for her next business opportunity when it materialized in 2012, shortly after she sold her rehab centres. A professional who had long been active in the Canadian franchise sector, Michael Martino, approached her asking if she’d join him in bringing the Right at Home franchise brand to the Canadian market. “He was a seasoned franchise professional and had heard through the grapevine that I had sold my rehab centres,” says DePetrillo. “He really wanted to go into the [home care] space and said he needed my healthcare help. I looked at it and loved the idea.”
What impressed DePetrillo most was that the brand had already built a strong reputation in global locations, including the U.K., Ireland, and Australia. It checked all the boxes: “Right at Home was a powerhouse in the home care space. You want a reputable company that provides a good service, accountability, and people you can rely on.”
DePetrillo also recognized a growing need for home care help in Canada, especially as people were waiting longer to start their families and many found themselves caring for young children and aging parents at the same time. “It’s the sandwich generation stuck between these conflicting responsibilities and they’re often looking to see how they can make their life work,” she says. “How they can help their mom live more independently and not have to run over every lunch hour to make her lunch. Those are the kind of services we provide.”
Similarly, adds DePetrillo, Baby Boomers entering their senior years are “looking at ways to be able to stay at home as long as they can and they are starting to plan for that. So the demand for home services is going to increase even more.”
Once she signed on the dotted line, DePetrillo became one of five initial shareholders in the Canadian Right at Home operation. Rather than making a beeline for the head office, however, she elected to work as a franchisee to start, owning and operating four Right at Home operations across the Golden Horseshoe region in southern Ontario. It was an intentional move to help her learn the ropes of the business from the ground up. “I wanted to perfect the operations; I wanted to be the guinea pig,” explains DePetrillo. “So that’s what I was. I wanted to take the bumps and the bruises on behalf of the system before we brought in any unit owners.”
Leading from experience
In the background was an ongoing discussion with Martino, the company’s CEO, that DePetrillo would eventually transition into a leadership position when he was ready to step back from the company and retire. That transition happened in 2017, when DePetrillo became the chief operating officer and Master Licensee for Canada. She was more than ready and hit the ground running, helping to grow the brand to 60 locations across the country in all provinces except Quebec, Newfoundland, and Saskatchewan. There are now plans in place to actively expand into the latter two.
DePetrillo also spearheaded some critical initiatives, including the introduction of an AI component to the Right at Home service offerings. The company uses sensi.ai technology—in the form of a small audio device no bigger than an air freshener—to alert the organization and client families to physical concerns like falls, pain, memory impairment, or urinary or respiratory changes. This allows them to take proactive care measures and optimize their care.
“AI has a really interesting place in home healthcare, and no, it can never replace the human element,” stresses DePetrillo. “It can provide us with incredible sight lines into our clients’ homes that can augment the type of care we provide or allow us to modify our care plans in a very cost-effective and strategic way. We can alert the family if the client is going to the washroom more frequently or is bumping into walls, and we can then make informed, human decisions around what’s happening.”
DePetrillo is very focussed on the human side to the business she’s running. She even avoids using the term franchisee. Instead, people are brought onboard as “care office owners.” This title exemplifies the idea that “every family has a unique circumstance, and our office and care planners know that the care we deliver is not going to look the same in everybody’s house,” explains DePetrillo. After all, health care is anything but one-size-fits-all.
“Where the franchise part comes in is in all of the brand standards, the operational protocols, and the hundreds of policies and procedures that have to be built in the healthcare space,” she explains.
So who are Right at Home’s care office owners? They are aspiring business owners who come from a variety of backgrounds, but all have a strong interest in helping people, says DePetrillo. “A lot of our best and most passionate care office owners are those who have a calling to help people,” she notes. “They want to be able to give back … and they have a huge social purpose. So that’s what we’re looking for, someone who’s passionate about social purpose.”
In other words, someone who’s a lot like DePetrillo herself: an ambitious business owner who still brings a caring touch to her work and always sees the human in front of her.
Learn more about franchising with Right at Home Canada
