Building a successful cleaning company is one accomplishment. Keeping it growing year after year is another. Helping other people build their own futures along the way is what the ISSA VEO Visionario Award was created to recognize.

Nancy Galván, founder and CEO of Unica Enterprises in Dallas, and Veronica Vidal, founder and CEO of Custom Cleaning and Management Services (CCMS) in Florida, were among the 2026 Visionario Award winners at the ISSA VEO Conference in Dallas this September. The award draws its meaning from VEO itself: Visión, Empeño, Oportunidad, or vision, determination and opportunity.

From art classroom to contracting company

Vidal grew up in Argentina, where she trained as a stage designer and worked toward a PhD in arts and visual arts. She taught art to students from elementary school through high school, a stretch of her life she credits with teaching her resilience.

After coming to the United States, she started a cleaning business by cleaning houses. That start eventually grew into a building service contracting company serving Florida, Washington, D.C. and Texas. CCMS works with local, state and federal government agencies, construction companies across the country, plus real estate and property management firms.

“My English, even today, I still have a lot of accent, but my English at that moment was not very good looking,” Vidal laughed. “I didn’t even know the rules. I didn’t even know the law. I didn’t even know the process to rent an apartment. I didn’t know anything.”

“Growing the business has meant continually learning, not just about operations, but also financial management, quality standards, business management itself and how to build a company and deliver a consistent service,” she explained.

She is now working to open industrial and medical divisions and volunteers with chambers of commerce and small business organizations to help other Hispanic and women-owned businesses reach new opportunities.

Night shifts after the day job

Galván launched Unica nearly 20 years ago as a side business, cleaning commercial properties after her shift as a contract administrator at Bell Helicopter.

“I knew back then that I would grow and scale the business,” Galván said.

She did. Unica is now a Hispanic- and woman-owned 8(a)-certified federal contractor with about 200 employees, cleaning municipal buildings, federal agencies and event centers throughout the Dallas-Fort Worth region and Oklahoma.

“As you can imagine, being a first-generation entrepreneur means that I don’t know anyone,” Galván noted. “So networking is key. And that is the first thing I did as I started scaling the company.”

She has served on the board of the Dallas Regional Chamber and stays active with women’s business groups. Her company also funds Unica scholarships at her Fort Worth high school to support the next generation of entrepreneurs.

A FaceTime call she wasn’t ready for

Vidal couldn’t attend the awards ceremony because her mother was visiting from Argentina. She learned the news on a FaceTime call she had expected to be a quick check-in, only to see members of the VEO team appear on screen to tell her she had won.

“It was like a bucket with cold water. I honestly didn’t expect it,” Vidal said.

Her first response was gratitude.

“I think that sometimes people see in you what you cannot see in yourself,” she shared.

Galván didn’t know she had been nominated until she saw her own picture on the screen at the event. She later learned that Andrea, Unica’s HR generalist, had submitted her name.

“I do recall pausing because I thought, is this really happening?” Galván said. “I screamed with excitement.”

She has received other awards over two decades in business. This one, after days spent with the VEO community, moved her to tears.

“It took me to day one. It really did,” she said. “I saw myself cleaning, and sleepless nights, and selling, and knocking on doors, and working and just trying to figure it out.”

Where determination does the heavy lifting

For Galván, the three VEO pillars connect directly to her identity as a first-generation Mexican-American who spent summers in Mexico and went to school in the U.S.

“Marrying both of these perspectives and the best of both countries is vision, determination and opportunity,” Galván explained. “That is everything I stand for.”

Vidal grew up in South America, where she said nothing was stable and everything took three times the effort. Of the three pillars, she considers determination the hardest.

“Vision for me is being able to see beyond what is in front of you today. Determination is the daily work,” Vidal said. “It’s like being the guardian of these dreams.”

Paying back five minutes of kindness

Vidal’s commitment to helping others traces back to a handful of people who helped her early on.

“They took five minutes to help me with simple things like a recommendation, a suggestion, sharing a story for motivation or giving me a cup of coffee when I went to clean their homes,” Vidal recalled.

Those connections led her to Small Business Administration classes on running a business, marketing and bookkeeping.

“I want everything that I’ve gained, and I learned to not be wasted, to be useful beyond my own company,” she said.

Galván frames helping others in terms of her team and the legacy she wants to leave.

“My team is the reason why we are who we are, and they’re the reason why we’re able to grow and expand,” Galván said. “I’m at a stage, I think maybe it’s midlife starting to kick in, where I think, okay, what is the bigger picture? What is the purpose?”

Learn your numbers and get in the room

“Start by taking your work and your potential seriously, even if your business is still small. Learn your numbers, your cost,” Vidal said. “You don’t need to know everything before you enter in a room.”

“Always keep your eyes open,” Galván advised. “Opportunity, it’s all around us.”