As a nurse in the healthcare field for the last decade, Jennifferre Mancillas started her nursing career with the purpose of connecting with people on a deeper level. She received her RN and RNC-NIC certifications, as well as her bachelor’s degree at University of Arlington. She started in the NICU caring for adults but later switched to pediatric nursing, helping children and their families in tough situations. It has been an honor for her to know that these parents trusted her with the lives of their children.
“It’s one of the most amazing things when you can do something that you enjoy and can positively impact others while you do it,” Jennifferre says.
As her nursing career progressed, Jennifferre wanted to create a way to help nurses’ jobs run more smoothly. She and other nurses had faced the problem of struggling to care for their patients effectively without the lights on during nighttime hours. This meant that nurses would oftentimes have to turn on the lights in hospital rooms to see their patients and care for them effectively, which in turn would result in the patients’ sleep being disturbed.
Jennifferre had always been someone who enjoyed solving issues, so to fix this problem she and her colleague Anthony created the uNight Light. This small device creates a big solution for nurses who want to effectively care for their patients without disturbing their sleep.
Many people do not always realize that many healthcare workers are not always given resources — scrubs, scrub hats and compression socks, for example — by the companies for which they work. In addition to creating the uNight Light, Jennifferre and Anthony wanted to create a platform that provided those on the job with resources for healthcare workers, which is why she launched her company Lumify. This company offers all the essentials that a healthcare worker would need that are not always provided for them on the job. So far, Lumify has partnered with over 150 different brands for products in healthcare.
However, launching Lumify did not happen without challenges. At the beginning, she struggled to navigate the tech world, and there was a disconnect between the world of app development, programming and investors and her vision within the world of healthcare. Thankfully, within that journey she was able to surround herself with people who supported her mission into the unfamiliarity of tech space.
“We did what nurses do best,” Jennifferre says. “We are great problem solvers and find a way to make it happen each and every time.”
As a nurse, multitasking was not a new concept to Jennifferre within the startup phase of her company, so she was able to avoid becoming overwhelmed with being an entrepreneur alongside her nursing job.
Jennifferre is also a member of the Johnson & Johnson Fellowship, a society created by the J&J company to promote positive changes in the healthcare field with the innovations created by healthcare workers. J&J fellows are leaders in healthcare who create projects for positive changes in patient and provider experiences. Within Jennifferre’s group, she was specially selected alongside only 12 other healthcare workers to be a J&J fellow in 2019.
One of Jennifferre’s important sayings to live by is “done is better than perfect.”
“If you get really focused on one thing and try to make it as perfect as possible, you miss out on so many opportunities and abilities to push forward and gain traction,” Jenniferre says. “So appreciate the fact that you accomplished stuff, and then you can go ahead and move on and conquer other things. It’s a really important thing to carry with you.”
You can find Jennifferre on Instagram at @jennifferre or on her company’s website!
