Erin Couchell
Erin Couchell is the Owner and CEO of Comfort Keepers across South Carolina and North Carolina, where she has built a multi-office in-home care organization serving communities including Greenville, Spartanburg, Rock Hill, Tryon, Shelby, and Cleveland. With more than 20 years of experience in senior care, she is dedicated to providing non-medical, personalized in-home support that helps older adults maintain independence, dignity, and quality of life. Her work is grounded in a mission she often describes as “elevating the human spirit.”
Since launching her first Comfort Keepers office in 2006, Erin has grown the organization into a network of locations serving a broad regional footprint. She leads with a strong focus on operational excellence, caregiver training, and continuous improvement, ensuring both clients and caregivers are supported through thoughtful systems and compassionate leadership. Erin is also known for embracing innovation and change, consistently seeking new tools, processes, and approaches that strengthen care delivery and improve the client experience.
Her career is deeply personal, shaped by her experience as a caregiver for her mother who faced early-onset Alzheimer’s disease, which ultimately inspired her transition from education into home care. A former elementary school teacher and graduate of Converse University, she brings a lifelong commitment to service, community impact, and leadership development. Under her guidance, Comfort Keepers has earned multiple industry recognitions and become a trusted provider of senior care across the Carolinas, known for its resilience, compassion, and people-first culture.
• Converse University- B.A.
• Caring with Heart Award
• 2024 Diamond Club Award
• 2014 Best In-Home Care Provider
• Minority Business Person of the Year
• Alzheimer's Association®
What do you attribute your success to?
I attribute my success to my parents, because we did not have an easy life, and we had to work hard for everything that we had. Starting with having jobs at the age of 14 or 15, to purchasing our own cars, my brothers and I worked to put ourselves through college. We had a good life, but it wasn't easy. And I think that we knew, I knew I had to work hard. I've never been afraid to work hard.
What’s the best career advice you’ve ever received?
The best career advice I’ve ever received is to “fail forward and fail fast”—if you’re going to take a risk, commit fully, and if it doesn’t work out, learn from it quickly, adjust, and keep moving forward.
What advice would you give to young women entering your industry?
I think it's a very hard job, because you are dealing with people in every aspect, from your employees to the clients, so it is a people-based business. You've got to have a high level of emotional intelligence, and you've got to have thick skin, because there are gonna be some really tough situations that you are dealing with on a day-to-day basis, whether it's from the employee standpoint, or even our clients and their families. Some are heartbreaking, some are just so sad, and some are wonderful. The emotions that come in owning a home care business run high at all times. I think surrounding yourself with good, solid people is critical, and I know it's a cliche, but I always say, find people that are smarter than you in different places, because you're going to need those strategic men and women to help build you. You cannot do this by yourself.
What are the biggest challenges or opportunities in your field right now?
The opportunity is that we are getting ready to begin the silver tsunami, where our population is aging very quickly. So I think there's going to be opportunities to care for more people, but also new opportunities in the way in which we deliver care. You're gonna see things like artificial intelligence helping us with communication, and different pieces of technology in the homes. As far as the workplace goes, recruiting and everything is just changing as fast as we can - you know, we start one thing and oops, there's someone who's got something even better, faster. So I think the technology is going to bring all these new opportunities, but it's going to also bring challenges as well. And I think one of our biggest challenges in home care right now is finding people that want home care to be a career choice. So I think continuing to unlock and find that perfect workforce where people want to take care of others and take care of seniors is going to be one of our biggest challenges in the next 10 years.
What values are most important to you in your work and personal life?
I think integrity and accountability are most important to me. I think if you are accountable to yourself and your beliefs, and you have a high level of integrity, I think those are the things that keep most people running. I think all the other values can fall underneath them. I mean, I could go through respect and dignity and professionalism, but I think if I had to choose two, it'd be just being accountable and having integrity in everything you do.