When Emma Dickison entered the franchising world, she wasn’t chasing a company title; she was merely attempting to assist her household. A single mother with a background in historical past and training, Dickison took a job with a little-known franchise model known as Blockbuster in 1990, then simply 150 areas sturdy. Fourteen years later, she’d helped develop it into a world juggernaut with over 8,800 areas and greater than $1 billion in annual gross sales.
“I fell in love with franchising,” she says. “If my mother and father had entry to this mannequin after they ran their small enterprise, it will’ve been a present. Franchising offers the community and assist impartial enterprise homeowners typically lack.”
At this time, Dickison is CEO and president of Residence Helpers Residence Care, a model ranked #489 on Entrepreneur‘s 2025 Franchise 500. She joined Residence Helpers greater than a decade in the past, and her private mission {and professional} expertise seamlessly align. She was just lately appointed to the Worldwide Franchise Affiliation‘s board of administrators — one in every of 16 new members elected in 2025 — capping off a profession constructed on innovation, empathy and impression.
“Our job is to allow them to inform their story — after which present the assist they want.”
Dickison’s connection to caregiving has been lifelong. At the same time as a younger woman, she helped her household assist family members by critical well being challenges, together with strokes, most cancers and the results of getting older. Her grandmother lived at dwelling for 18 years following a sequence of strokes, cared for by the household. At this time, Dickison is as soon as once more navigating caregiving firsthand, serving to handle in-home hospice take care of her mother-in-law.
“Though I do that for a residing, it is nonetheless arduous when it is your personal household,” she says. “Nevertheless it jogs my memory that, for most individuals, that is their first expertise with caregiving. They’re emotional, overwhelmed. Our job is to allow them to inform their story — after which present the assist they want.”
That blend of empathy and entrepreneurial drive is a part of what’s made Dickison a revered chief within the franchising area. Along with Blockbuster, the place she rose to nationwide director of franchise operations, she was vp of franchise providers at Sylvan Studying, labored with the Residence Care Affiliation of America as board president and spent six years on the IFA’s Ladies’s Franchise Committee.
She’s watched the variety of girls within the trade develop exponentially since her first IFA conference. “At my first IFA conference, there have been perhaps 30 girls within the room,” Dickison says. “At this time, there are tons of, and it has been unimaginable to look at that development and to play an element in it.”
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“We’ve got to guard this mannequin and make it simpler for franchisees to thrive.”
Now, as a newly-elected IFA board member, Dickison is targeted on advocacy — educating lawmakers, shoppers and communities about what franchising actually is. “These aren’t big firms; these are native companies,” she says. “We’ve got to guard this mannequin and make it simpler for franchisees to thrive — whether or not that is eliminating pointless crimson tape or enhancing entry to capital.”
That mission resonates deeply with the broader targets of the IFA. Because the franchising trade faces growing regulatory scrutiny and widespread misconceptions, Dickison’s voice brings each credibility and compassion to the desk. Her a long time of hands-on expertise — as a franchise chief, caregiver and advocate — equip her to talk not simply from a coverage standpoint, however from lived expertise.
“Emma’s experience and expertise in franchising will assist take the affiliation to new ranges so we will additional assist our members and the alternatives they create in native communities,” Matt Haller, IFA president and CEO, mentioned in an announcement.
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At Residence Helpers, Dickison continues to push for innovation. Underneath her management, the corporate launched the Cared-4 program in 2021, which layers in expertise, wellness calls and dietary assist alongside conventional in-home care. She additionally helped steer the model by the pandemic, working with state and federal leaders to make sure dwelling care was deemed important in all 50 states and Washington, D.C.
“We got here out stronger,” she says. “Covid-19 put dwelling care on the map. It confirmed individuals how important it’s — and the way a lot better it may be.”
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