Meet Ken & Teresa Carfagno

Ken Carfagno graduated from Penn State with a mechanical engineering degree, Dean's List, after a co-op at Lutron. General Electric rejected him three times before he finally landed five interviews in one day for GE's Field Engineering Program in Greenville, South Carolina.

On the fourth interview, he told the interviewer the truth: his heart wasn't in the job he was interviewing for. His real dream was GE's Edison Engineering Development Program. The interviewer said he couldn't recommend Ken for the role he was hiring — then handed him the business card of the person who did hire for EEDP. "What you do next is up to you," he said. That's how Ken got into GE.

For a while, Ken was — in his own words — "100% sold out to GE." Engaged to no one, he booked a $9,000 trip to Fiji because he figured the big money was right around the corner. Then a GE executive told him the executive track meant living apart from his own family, and a few months later, September 11th happened while Ken sat at his desk in Greenville. A week after that, he and Teresa watched a movie about a man who gets to see the family life he never chose, and started asking why they were living so far from everyone they loved. Ken proposed five months later. The couple went into business together that March, and on July 14, 2002, they accepted Christ. Ken's priorities flipped that year — from Career, Hobbies, Family, God, to God, Family, Career, Hobbies — and they haven't moved since.

In July 2005, Teresa was offered the chance to clean their apartment complex. She bought liability insurance, opened Carfagno Cleaning on July 25, 2005, and cleaned with their son strapped to her back. That October, GE let Ken go — and the business Teresa had already started became the real path forward.

Then Coldwell Banker called, asking whether he wanted a place on their preferred vendor list. Ken started working alongside stagers and realtors, and they taught him something that still defines the company: the art of the first impression. Not just cleaning a space — presenting it.

He ran it solo for fourteen years. He and Teresa raised five kids along the way. Teresa became a full-time mom and homeschool teacher while Ken built his schedule around being home. Each of the kids started helping around age nine and was cleaning by eleven — their daughter Christianna is the company's bookkeeper today.

In July 2018 they moved home to Montgomery County. Ken started the new company later that year, launched a cleaning podcast, and joined the Indian Valley Chamber of Commerce in 2019 — then poured himself into that chamber through the pandemic. The business was rebranded Carfagno Commercial Cleaning in late 2021, named the Indian Valley Chamber's Small Business of the Year in 2022, and marked twenty years in business in 2025.

Ken is no longer unfulfilled. God, then family, then career — that order hasn't changed since 2002, and it's still how he runs the business today. He looks forward to serving the customers and team members God places in this business for years to come.