Iris is all about support and giving back. Whether it’s helping a family find a new home, helping a military member find cost-friendly housing, or running a conference for military women, Iris is the kind of person who will tirelessly serve.
Iris is a top 500 realtor in the Tampa Bay Area with Keller Williams Realty in Brandon. She also runs Military Home Base, a real estate concierge company. Its services are free to veterans. The company’s mission is to ensure military buyers save as much money as possible on their real estate transactions. Tampa Bay Real Producers Magazine featured her on the cover of their November issue for her work with military families. Iris also co-founded and produced the Military Women’s Conference. The conference aims to bring together female veterans, military spouses, and mothers of service members. It creates a community of women supporting women.
Both of Iris’s real estate businesses are active, so she doesn’t have a lot of downtime. Nevertheless, she jumped into volunteering with both feet. Though she loves to craft and sew—her favorite thing to do is create costumes and costume prosthetics for her daughters—she chose a different volunteer role for this project.
Iris’ favorite costume prosthetic are the horns which she carved out of packing foam. 
The Tengu costume she created for her daughter is also one of her favorites.
Those who can’t sew can support the crafters, and even kids can help!
She and her daughters are putting together fabric kits, and Iris is coordinating fabric cutters in her area. Her work for the group, she says, is pretty straightforward. She is working with 10-15 households. She mostly does porch pick-ups and drop-offs of material for the sewing kits and the completed kits. For her, the trick is keeping track of who has fabric and who is ready for more. She hopes driving and picking up will help Hope and all those sewing to deliver as many masks as possible.
She reports good news from the roads. She believes people are slowing down instead of being in a mad rush to get to the next thing. Families are spending more time together, living life at a slower pace. As a matter of fact, she hears that most households are engaging their kids in the project. This is great for the children, the parents, and the medical workers. The children are finding their help to be both concrete and well-valued. The parents are happy to have their children occupied. In addition, many hands make light work, which means more masks for our medical teams. “Who better to receive our efforts than those working on the frontline of this pandemic?” she asks.
No stranger to large charitable giving projects
Iris is happy there is a way to be part of the hopefully temporary solution to current equipment shortages. However, she is frustrated because, despite how hard everyone is working, the sheer volume of need remains high. The huge amount of requests coming in can sometimes seem overwhelming.
Yet Iris has dealt with overwhelming before. This is not her first large charitable-giving experience. After Hurricane Michael swept through Florida’s panhandle, Military Home Base facilitated a huge donation drive. It caught the attention of Vincent Jackson, Derrick Brooks, and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Together, they were able to send two tractor trailers full of donations to hard-hit areas. They also sent multiple small trailers. Iris’s team personally delivered one of the smaller loads. She says it was heartbreaking to see how much people needed at the time.
And the need is still high among medical workers here, so Iris encourages everyone to get involved in some way. She says, “It costs nothing to observe and engage. If you have time to spare, this is a great way to give back to those taking the direct risk every day.”