Her Story
About Kiara
Kiara Cummings is an experienced executive assistant, paralegal, and administrative operations professional with more than a decade of experience supporting leadership teams across healthcare, legal services, and community-focused organizations. She currently serves as an Executive Assistant at DD Homes Network, where she supports leadership, coordinates administrative operations, and helps maintain efficient organizational processes. Her expertise includes executive support, calendar and travel coordination, confidential communications, legal documentation, compliance, and organizational planning. With a calm, solutions-oriented approach and strong interpersonal skills, Kiara is dedicated to helping leaders and teams operate effectively while maintaining a high standard of professionalism and service.
Kiara began her paralegal career in 2014 and subsequently worked at Consumer Legal Group from April 2014 to January 2022, managing client records, preparing legal documents, conducting legal research, coordinating real estate closings, and monitoring critical deadlines. She also gained experience as a Legal Assistant at Heyl, Royster, Voelker & Allen. Her healthcare experience includes specialty pharmacy operations, where she has contributed to insurance claims processing and the coordination and dispensing of specialty medications for patients requiring life-sustaining treatments. She also brings experience in employee onboarding, benefits administration, compliance, and managing human resources processes for more than 200 employees across multiple healthcare facilities. In addition to her professional experience, Kiara is a pharmacy technician certified in Illinois and a licensed esthetician, combining administrative, legal, and healthcare knowledge in her work.
Beyond her current responsibilities, Kiara is pursuing entrepreneurial and educational goals centered on improving care for vulnerable populations. Drawing on her previous experience with referrals and admissions for residential care facilities, she is working toward opening her own group home for adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities. She is also preparing to begin nursing school in November, with the goal of becoming a registered nurse and eventually a nursing home administrator. Inspired in part by personal experiences, she hopes to establish a nonprofit initiative supporting older adults living with dementia. Kiara studied business, management, marketing, and related support services at Jacksonville State University and completed esthetics training at Paul Mitchell the School-Chicago. Through her diverse professional background and commitment to compassionate service, she aspires to strengthen healthcare and community organizations while creating meaningful, lasting support for individuals and families.
Her Interview
Ten minutes with Kiara
01What do you attribute your success to?
I would say definitely self-discipline. It is challenging. However, being disciplined in all aspects of your life just gives you the motivation to keep going, knowing when to say no to certain things. You can't make everything. When you have a full plate, you have to be very selective with how you spend your time. And so, because I do have the children, luckily I do work from home, so that helps. I also throw a second one in there, self-love as well. Self-love is something that goes so much deeper than, oh, how I look. When you love yourself, it's certain things that you are just simply not gonna stand for, and that has really gotten me far.
02What’s the best career advice you’ve ever received?
Shared their passion for working with elderly populations, particularly those with dementia, inspired by losing their father to the disease two years ago. The speaker also mentioned their background as a licensed esthetician and event planner, and highlighted Attorney Deidre Woods Stokes as a professional mentor who helped shape their career path.
03What advice would you give to young women entering your industry?
To be honest I would say start with nursing. If I could start with nursing sooner things would have fell into place differently. Start with nursing. You learn so much, and there are so many other options available. People think that you're just an RN, you're gonna work in a hospital. No. There are so many great opportunities that you can offer people, having healthcare under your belt. Healthcare administration is a good one as well, or nursing. Just to have that empathy, and keep going. Do not stop when the path doesn't look straight, sometimes it doesn't have to. You keep stepping through, and eventually, you will create your own path.
04What are the biggest challenges or opportunities in your field right now?
The challenge I see is the medication, the Medicaid, the cost of the medication, and being on this side of the field now, and just watching patients struggle to pay for these co-payments and these deductibles, thousands and thousands of dollars. It's hard to space them sometimes, because they're nothing that I can do aside from what options are readily available to me, but I will search, I try to find them grants, especially the Medicaid recipients. The challenge is the medication. The medication, something has to change. It is affecting our seniors and our sickly population is getting way worse because the insurance companies are constantly reducing what they cover, so it's more out-of-pocket costs for the patient that they already cannot afford, but it's life-threatening medication that they have to be on it, so it creates a level of anxiety and stress for the patient.
05What values are most important to you in your work and personal life?
Definitely family. I have two little munchkins. They are teenagers. Family, like, there is without family, if like, what do you like, what's left? Like, relationships, to me, are important. That is something that I hold very dear to me. Like, family values, and of course, God. Definitely cannot without him, but for me, family is my number one. That is my number one value, is my family.
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