This week’s episode of “WisBusiness: the Podcast” is with Dr. Christina Henderson, CEO and founder of Madison-based Reliable Residence.
Henderson, a second-year resident physician, saw the need for a trusted platform offering short-term housing for traveling medical professionals and students while completing her own medical schooling in Colorado.
After dealing with a “terrible, terrible housing experience” during her medical rotations, “I realized that there had to be a better way for medical students to find housing for these rotations that we all have to do and are so important to our residency careers,” she said.
The platform matches traveling medical professionals and students with furnished housing on a monthly basis.
“It’s really your all-in-one solution to finding something that is close to the hospital, safe and affordable for you,” she said.
The podcast highlights Henderson’s experience balancing entrepreneurship and a medical career, her vision for the business and the path ahead.
“I don’t get a lot of sleep,” she said with a laugh. “I wake up pretty early as it is, and then I’ll work on the company or whatever needs to get done that morning … and also in the evening, when I get home late at night. This has really taken on a life of its own, but it’s so rewarding.”
Currently, the short-term housing industry focuses on vacations and even travel nurses to some extent, but Henderson says “people have kind of forgotten about medical students.” She noted these students often need housing for a month to six weeks, not as long as most travel nurse contracts, and have more restrictions around transportation and housing costs.
“Those key factors are very important to them, and we help this population, of course in addition to travel nurses, by selecting units in Madison that fit that criteria,” she said. “So we do a really good job of filtering out places that suit them to really save them a lot of time and stress, when they’re already stressed out as it is.”
