Agatha Home Health exists because of two women: Mavis Payne, and her mother.

Mavis was born in Jamaica, near Mandeville in the parish of Manchester, and raised by Beryl Agatha White — a caregiver by trade, by temperament, and by faith, who cooked for neighbors and strangers alike and lived to 100. When Mavis went looking for senior care for her own mother years later, nothing she found was good enough. So she built it herself — and personally cared for Beryl Agatha through her elder years while doing it. Agatha Home Health carries her mother’s name.

Mavis graduated from the University of Maryland, College Park with a B.A. in Psychology, then spent more than two decades in telecommunications and customer operations before pivoting to the work she was raised for: geriatric nursing. She earned her Registered Nurse license from the Maryland Board of Nursing and has spent over 25 years caring for Maryland seniors — including founding and directing Mandeville House, a licensed assisted living home in Waldorf named for her family’s hometown in Jamaica.

In 2015, Mavis co-founded the Coalition of Assisted Living Providers (CoALP), a nonprofit advancing senior care standards across Maryland. As Agatha’s Clinical Director, she remains what she has always been: a nurse who knows every client by name, and the standard every Agatha caregiver is measured against.