There is a particular kind of courage that does not announce itself. It does not arrive with fanfare or a clear road map. It arrives on a plane crossing an ocean, with a nursing degree from another country tucked into memory, a baby due in weeks, and a language that still feels borrowed. When Fabiola Dominique stepped onto American soil in 2018, she was twenty-five years old, eight months pregnant, and carried almost nothing financially. Her English was not yet fluent. Her Haitian nursing credential still needed to be transferred and validated within the U.S. healthcare system. The country she had moved to after getting married was still, in almost every practical sense, a stranger to her.
What she had was a vision. Not the polished kind presented in pitch decks, but the quieter, more durable kind that holds a person together when the more sensible option would be to stop.
That vision, sustained through setbacks that would have derailed most, eventually led Fabiola to found ANS Staffing Agency, where she now serves as Founder and CEO. The healthcare workforce solutions company was built on the conviction that the people designing the solution should actually understand the problem from the inside.
A Career Rebuilt, One Credential at a Time
The first move was not glamorous, and Fabiola did not expect it to be. In 2019, with the support of her then-husband, she enrolled in CNA school. She had already graduated from nursing school in Haiti in 2018, but rebuilding a clinical career in the United States required starting at the foundation and working steadily upward. By 2020, she was working as a Certified Nursing Assistant, learning the landscape of American healthcare from the front lines of patient care. The work was demanding, and the environment was not always welcoming.
“Because my English was limited, I experienced bullying and discouragement from some people around me. There were moments when I felt isolated and underestimated, but deep inside, I always had a clear sense of direction.”
The clarity she describes was not a passive state. It required active, daily maintenance, a deliberate decision to keep the long view in sight when the immediate environment was working against it. In October 2020, she began the formal process of transferring her nursing credentials through the Foreign Nurse Credentialing process. The process was detailed and slow, but she moved through it with the same focused discipline she brought to every obstacle that followed.
In June 2021, she sat for the NCLEX for the first time. She did not pass. The heartbreak of that result was real, and she does not minimize it. What she chose to do next is what makes this chapter of her story distinct.
“Although it was heartbreaking, I refused to quit.”
Seven months pregnant, physically exhausted, she returned to her study materials and kept preparing. In October 2021, she passed the NCLEX on her second attempt. In January 2022, she officially became a Registered Nurse.
What the Bedside Teaches You
The clinical years that followed were formative in ways that would later shape every decision she made as a founder. After becoming an RN, Fabiola was promoted to Wound Care Nurse and subsequently moved into management. Each step extended her view of the healthcare system and its persistent, structural vulnerabilities.
“I personally witnessed the daily struggles healthcare facilities face due to staffing shortages, staff burnout, and the difficulty of finding reliable and compassionate healthcare professionals,” she says. She watched nurses arrive at shifts already depleted. She saw facilities chronically understaffed, and patients who deserved closer attention receiving less of it simply because the teams responsible for their care were overwhelmed. These were not edge cases. They were the daily rhythm of a system under sustained pressure.
The question that took root in her was not abstract. It was operational: what would it look like if someone who had actually lived inside that environment built the staffing solution?
Building the Company That Needed to Exist
ANS Staffing Agency did not emerge from a market gap identified on a spreadsheet. It emerged from Fabiola’s years at the bedside and in nursing leadership, from the accumulated understanding that the staffing industry needed to be approached with more than operational efficiency. It needed clinical credibility and leadership that understood what healthcare actually feels like from within.
The misconceptions that surround staffing agencies are common, and she addresses them without defensiveness. Many healthcare organizations assume that agencies prioritize speed over quality, placing staff quickly without meaningful regard for continuity of care. Many healthcare professionals, meanwhile, believe agencies are disconnected from the real pressures of clinical work.
“At ANS Staffing Agency, we approach staffing differently because our leadership comes directly from hands-on nursing and healthcare management experience. We focus heavily on communication, professionalism, compliance, and long-term relationships with both facilities and healthcare professionals,” she says.
The mission she has defined for the company is precise: to provide reliable healthcare workforce solutions that improve patient care, support healthcare facilities, and empower healthcare professionals. What distinguishes ANS is not simply what it says about itself, but the experiential foundation from which it operates. She has been the nurse on the understaffed unit. She has been the manager watching her team strain. That history does not sit quietly in the background when she makes business decisions. It is the lens through which every decision is made.
Today, she oversees recruitment, onboarding, compliance, credential verification, staffing coordination, facility communication, and business development. The operational scope is considerable, but when she describes what she finds most meaningful about her work, she returns not to structure or scale but to people.
“I especially enjoy mentoring nurses and healthcare workers because I personally understand many of the challenges they face,” she says.
The Network Behind the Work
No company of consequence is built by one person alone, and Fabiola is clear-eyed about that reality. ANS Staffing Agency has grown through a network of dedicated professionals that includes experienced Registered Nurses, Licensed Practical Nurses, and Certified Nursing Assistants, alongside recruiters, onboarding specialists, compliance partners, payroll professionals, mentors, and healthcare administrators. What connects this network is not only professional qualification but a shared understanding of what healthcare staffing actually costs when it fails, in patient safety, in staff well-being, and in institutional trust. At ANS, every placement decision carries that weight, and the team treats it accordingly.
The Weight of Building While Breaking
There is a chapter in Fabiola’s story that sits alongside the professional milestones and refuses to be separated from them. While she was building ANS Staffing Agency, navigating nursing leadership, managing financial pressure, and meeting her professional responsibilities, she was also going through a divorce. She was raising three daughters.
“There were moments when I questioned whether I would be able to continue moving forward,” she says.
The doubt she describes is not the ordinary uncertainty of entrepreneurship. It is the kind that moves through every room of a person’s life simultaneously, reaching into the sense of identity and asking whether the version of yourself that had the vision is still there. Navigating it required anchors.
Her mother was the most constant of them. While she studied and worked long hours, her mother helped care for her children and offered an unbroken presence through the hardest stretches.
“She never left my side during the hardest moments of my life,” she says.
Her faith in God provided another layer of steadiness, a source of strength and peace she returns to consistently when describing how she maintained direction during periods of acute uncertainty.
Coming from a family of six children, Fabiola is the first to reach this level professionally and entrepreneurially. That is a milestone with meaning that extends far beyond personal achievement. It is the kind of milestone that quietly rewrites what is possible for everyone who comes after.
The Crisis the Industry Cannot Afford to Ignore
The workforce challenges Fabiola speaks about are not peripheral concerns. Burnout among healthcare professionals is one of the most significant and sustained pressures facing the healthcare system today. Facilities continue to grapple with staffing shortages, employee retention problems, scheduling instability, and the compounding difficulty of maintaining quality patient care while managing operational demands that never let up.
Her analysis of the problem carries the weight of someone who has been on both sides of it.
“Healthcare professionals want to feel valued, respected, and supported. I believe staffing agencies and healthcare organizations must work together to create healthier work environments, stronger communication, and more reliable staffing systems that prioritize both patient safety and employee well-being.”
That framing positions staffing not as a transactional service but as a structural contributor to the health of the entire care ecosystem. When the people delivering care are not sustained, the quality of care itself erodes. She arrived at this understanding not through policy analysis but through years of firsthand experience, and it shapes every facility relationship and every professional placement ANS makes.
What Has Been Built, and What Comes Next
Among the milestones Fabiola points to with clear pride are becoming a licensed healthcare staffing agency, building relationships with healthcare facilities, successfully onboarding nurses and healthcare workers, and establishing the operational systems that support long-term growth. These are not minor achievements for a company built from the ground up by a woman navigating personal upheaval and professional reinvention at the same time.
The vision she holds for ANS is expansive. She intends to grow it into a nationally recognized healthcare workforce solutions company, one known for professionalism, compassion, compliance, and quality staffing support. The ambition is oriented not simply toward scale but toward a specific outcome: a healthcare system where facilities feel supported, healthcare professionals feel valued, and patient care remains the central priority.
“I also hope my journey inspires immigrant women, nurses, and single mothers to believe that challenges do not define their future,” she says.
That sentence carries full weight when you know the arc of the story behind it. It is not an aspiration offered from a comfortable distance. It is the conclusion drawn from eight years of building through conditions that would have justified stopping at nearly every turn.
A Company Built With Purpose
Outside of work, Fabiola stays grounded through the things that have always steadied her. Time with her three daughters remains one of her primary motivations. Her faith continues to provide the kind of strength and peace that professional achievement alone cannot supply, and she pursues personal growth with the same commitment she brings to business development.
She is equally deliberate about how she describes the company she has built.
“ANS Staffing Agency was never created to become another problem within healthcare. It was created to become part of the solution.”
That distinction, between adding to a burden and choosing to lift it, is the animating principle of everything Fabiola has built. It is also the clearest articulation of what separates a company founded on genuine experience from one founded simply on opportunity. She has been inside the problem. She knows its weight, its texture, and its human cost. And she built her company for the precise purpose of making it lighter.
Quotes
“My faith in God, the support of my mother, and my vision for the future helped me continue pushing forward despite uncertainty.”
Also read: The Most Visionary Leaders in Nursing & Staffing 2026
