In this episode, Victoria Sopik, CEO and Co-Founder of Kids & Company, shares how systematic compliance management and servant leadership create accountability across 150+ childcare centers.
Our Expert Victoria Sopik
Victoria Sopik is the CEO and Co-Founder of Kids & Company, operating 150+ locations across North America. With 40+ years in early childhood education, Victoria built her career from running a single center in 1981 to co-founding Canada’s first coast-to-coast corporate childcare provider in 2002. Her leadership philosophy centers on servant leadership: she spends 60%+ of her time in the field and personally gives families her cell phone number. Victoria believes effective compliance culture starts at the top and requires leaders who maintain attention to critical details at every level.
About Victoria’s Approach to Operations
Victoria’s operational philosophy is simple: childcare leadership means looking after the details. She built Kids & Company across Canada through systematic processes, proactive risk management, and a culture of critical thinking. Her approach empowers center directors to take ownership using a 24-48 hour problem escalation framework. Victoria emphasizes that walking past a problem without addressing it condones it. Successful multi-site operations require accessibility, field presence, and the understanding that preventing small issues stops larger problems from ever occurring.
In this episode, we cover:
– Servant leadership and critical thinking in compliance
– Empowering directors to own and escalate problems
– Systematic compliance tracking across multiple sites
– CEO accessibility and field presence
A sneak peek inside the episode:
“Many people think because I’m in a more senior role, they want to be in their office doing strategy and blue sky thinking. It’s not a high level job in child care. You don’t get to the top where you’re doing strategy. It’s like, why don’t they have any milk today? Why didn’t it get delivered? Why don’t they have hats on? They’re outside. The sun’s come out. ”
Watch the conversation:
