We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Kelli Christina. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Kelli below.

Kelli, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today How did you get your first job in the field that you practice in today?

At around 30 years old, I decided to switch out careers after a decade of restaurant management and hospitality experience. I was a young mother and divorced mother then I often had to balance life and responsibilities with my young son Garrett being first in life. In the restaurant Industry, you often had to transfer locations, cities and states to fast track into general management or upper management within a restaurant company. As a single mother, I chose to stay stable and in one school system versus transferring locations for promotions and this would hold back my own career. As a business professional, I was tired of empty promises and limited promotions.

I decided it was time to switch out careers and sales or recruitment made a lot of sense towards a transition. I had used a hospitality recruitment company in my own career with management jobs and interviews. My old boss and manager Monica Bell actually offered me a recruiter position within her own company three times before I accepted the challenge. It was a very scary switch over into a one hundred percent commission job with no benefits or salary. Often with sales and recruitment jobs then you either hit it big and strong or fail rather quickly and chose another line of work. I would start my recruitment career while recruiting managers, district managers and area directors for restaurant companies. I hit the job aggressively from the very start and would continue with this career up until current day. While recruiting for the hospitality industry, then my favorite memories included attending all the new restaurant openings and events of the late nineties. I would later bridge into medical staffing and corporate while my ex-husband encouraged me down this path.

I found a very common denominator with my social and work skills between the hospitality and recruitment industries. Both industries carry employees that are very passionate about taking care of people and service. Both industries carry bosses and employees that can multi-task with smart and brilliant minds and big personalities.

Kelli, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

I am business owner, recruitment specialist, public speaker, and international best selling author who runs a permanent medical staffing company, KD-Staffing. My training and keynote session, “Recruitment Is An Art,” is sought after by sales and recruitment professionals. I hope to expand my businesses and help as many people as possible achieve success. I have a large passion towards let’s “make a positive difference” in today’s society.

I started in the restaurant business at a very young age, and I studied business, hotel and restaurant management at the University of North Texas. At the age of 30, I pivoted into what has since become a 23-year stretch of success in healthcare recruitment and placements. My management career eventually evolved into launching my own medical staffing firm in 2007.

Tell us more about KD-Staffing.
Whether you’re a boss or you’re working for one, you’re going to face complications and challenges throughout a career. I have ten years of restaurant management and 23 plus years in recruitment and managing staffing teams and operations. My team has won multiple sales awards. Through a period of ups and downs, my business persevered, focusing solely on hospital staffing and creating a niche for itself among nurses, nursing managers and directors, physicians and other medical professionals wishing to find and maintain roles in hospital settings.

KD-Staffing works on contingency, which means we don’t get paid unless its job is complete and ensuring a high level of excellence across the board. As of right now, the focus is primarily on nursing roles. We often advertise “Transform Your Healthcare Team with KD-Staffing!” We provide expert medical recruitment for hospitals, clinics, and ERs. Discover top-notch nursing talent. Partner with us for a healthier future!”

Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?

I launched a best selling legal thriller and book in 2021 called “Riding The Executive Roller Coaster-Medical Staffing Cases” that carries some inside life lessons and some inspirational testimonial categories towards life and business challenges. Surviving hard and difficult life situations will both educate you, make you stronger and help build your resilience in sometimes labeled “impossible circumstances” for survival.

In the chapters of this book, I would lose everything and become broke through an extremely traumatic and difficult lawsuit in medical staffing. I was unable to collect my last recruitment paycheck, or commissions and I would become homeless in 2011. Meanwhile, my entire life consisted of having money, executive jobs and success prior to this loss and experience. I would walk in the shoes of the under privileged for a short period of time and I learned how to rebuild my entire life while going day by day and week by week. I worked two and three jobs for rebuilding and the type jobs often termed “overqualified” for the position. Meanwhile, I was used to being the boss and executive for many years. I would learn to master the qualities called resilience, humility and perseverance. The idea of “doing what it takes” during challenging times is often an idea that can be hard to swallow and accept. It’s not a comfortable position and yet it can produce amazing progress and results.

Society can be cruel and often judge people by their job titles, jobs, backgrounds and various categories. People tend to think their entitled to judge others and many times it’s unnecessary. People by pure human instinct will turn their backs on people and their problems, gossip and entertain cruel treatment while other people are in down stages or down chapters of life.
I would learn to ignore people, their opinions and judgements in the chapters of “Riding The Executive Roller Coaster-Medical Staffing Cases” while rebuilding my life and business. Sometimes, “doing what it takes” can be a rough and tough path until results happen and life becomes easier again. Keep your eyes on your goals and always keep moving forward in life.

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

Successful people in life can be challenged with life circumstances and experiences that give us qualities that we carry on with ourselves and our network of people. We can influence people based on examples, personalities and characteristics. My brand is a very strong example of humility, hard work and gratitude. Life can change successful people into narcissistic, overbearing, judgmental, pretentious and vain characteristics. Don’t let life change your thinking towards “other people being beneath you.” We have choices on the type people we want to be in life and I chose to walk with the grateful, faithful and humble personalities.

I often think God put me in some challenging circumstances and years so that I could always learn to practice true humility and kindness towards other people. We have good and bad people in the underprivileged, middle class and/or rich class. One day, I woke up to realize that my spiritual life replaced the love of material processions in life.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.kellidenneheychristina.com
• Instagram: Kelli Dennehey Christina (@kelli.christina) • Instagram photos and videos
• Facebook: (1) Kelli Dennehey Christina | Facebook
• Linkedin: Kelli Dennehey Christina | LinkedIn
• Twitter: (20) Kelli A. Christina (@Kelli5884) / Twitter
• Youtube: Kelli Dennehey Christina – YouTube
• Other: https://kdstaffing.org/

Image Credits

Angie Dawn Photography in Texas- With me since 2015. I own all photos