Interise Announces Winner of First Annual Citizens Bank Good Citizens Award

Inaugural Award Recognizes Small Business with a Significant Positive
Impact in Low Income Community

BOSTON–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Today, Interise
and Citizens
Bank announced Tremendous Maid as the winner of the Good Citizens
Award, which recognizes a local small business that has a significant
positive impact in a low-to-moderate-income community. Tremendous Maid
was honored at thrive!,
Interise’s annual event celebrating the success of its alumni, which was
held on Friday, October 23 in Boston.

Tremendous
Maid was selected as the inaugural winner of the Citizens Bank Good
Citizens Award due to the company’s rapid growth and commitment to
providing careers for Latino immigrants within the commercial and
residential cleaning business. The company was founded in 2011 by
sisters Nisaury Tejeda and Victoria Amador along with their mother Rosa
Tejeda, all three of whom immigrated to the United States. 20 years ago
from the Dominican Republic. In 2014, both Nisaury and Victoria
participated in the StreetWise
‘MBA’™ program and in the year since, the company has secured
contracts with 22 new commercial institutions and increased commercial
sales by 215 percent. Tremendous Maid plans to expand to 125 employees
by 2018 with an employee retention rate of 85 percent.

“We are grateful to be named the recipient of the Citizens Bank Good
Citizens Award as this is a reminder to our team that together we truly
do make a difference,” said Victoria Amador, president and CEO of
Tremendous Maid. “Throughout the years at Tremendous Maid/Boston’s Best
Commercial Cleaning, we have learned that we need to have a clear vision
of where we want our company to be three to five years from today; this
idea has changed the way we do business. We have learned to always put
our employees well-being as the first priority since we believe our
purpose is to help our employees achieve their dreams – we just happen
to be in the business of cleaning. This mentality has changed the way we
feel and act throughout the company and our employees see the difference
because they too are part of that cultural shift. Our goal is to help
our employees develop both personally and professionally and we would
not have a clear understanding of what this really means had we not
graduated from the StreetWise ‘MBA’™ program.”

The Citizens Bank Good Citizens Award will be presented annually at thrive!,
Interise’s celebration of small business success, and will recognize one
small business that is making a significant positive impact in a
low-to-moderate-income community. Citizens Bank employees helped develop
the selection criteria and its employees will nominate businesses and
participate in the selection committee. Nominations are limited to
Interise businesses located in Citizens Bank service areas.

“With community involvement as one of our principal values at Citizens
Bank, the Good Citizens Award is one small way that we are giving back
to the community and recognizing the small businesses that are having a
positive impact on the neighborhoods that need it most,” said Quincy
Miller, president of Citizens Bank, Massachusetts. “Tremendous Maid
perfectly embodies the attributes that we were looking to honor when
conceptualizing this award as they are committed to helping the
community by hiring Latino immigrants and providing them with
opportunities to grow within the company. We look forward to watching as
Tremendous Maid continues to expand their business and impact in the
future, and we are excited to recognize additional companies each year
as the Good Citizens Award grows.”

Over the course of a decade, Interise has served more than 3,350 small
businesses in 65 communities across the United States. Designed to help
grow small businesses, create jobs and revitalize local economies,
Interise alumni have secured almost $3 billion in government and
institutional contracts since 2008 and experienced an average increase
in annual revenues of $481,000. In 2014, they created jobs at 8x the
rate of the private sector as a whole. To learn more about Interise,
please visit www.interise.org.

ABOUT INTERISE

Interise is the go-to partner with a proven model for
accelerating economic and small business growth in lower income
communities. Its StreetWise ‘MBA’^TM provides small business
owners with the business knowledge, management know-how and
relationships they need to scale using peer-based learning models.
Alumni have secured almost $3 billion dollars in government and
institutional contracts since 2008. In 2014, they created jobs at 8x the
rate of the private sector as a whole. As alumni grow, they contribute
to economic development, job creation and social resilience within their
local community. Headquartered in Boston, Interise currently offers its
program in 65 communities directly and through 15 partners, including
NYU Stern School of Business, The Cities of Houston, TX and Portland,
OR, and the National Urban League. This unique licensing model allows
partners to deliver the StreetWise ‘MBA’ ^TM program through
their own locally branded programs, providing them with training,
quality assurance and evaluation. To learn more visit www.interise.org
or follow @StreetWise_MBA.

About Citizens Financial Group, Inc.

Citizens Financial Group, Inc. is one of the nation’s oldest and largest
financial institutions, with $137.3 billion in assets as of June 30,
2015. Headquartered in Providence, Rhode Island, Citizens offers a broad
range of retail and commercial banking products and services to
individuals, small businesses, middle‐market companies, large
corporations and institutions. In Consumer Banking, Citizens helps its
retail customers “bank better” with mobile and online banking, a 24/7
customer contact center and the convenience of approximately 3,200 ATMs
and approximately 1,200 Citizens Bank branches in 11 states in the New
England, Mid‐Atlantic and Midwest regions. Citizens also provides
mortgage lending, auto lending, student lending and commercial banking
services in select markets nationwide. In Commercial Banking, Citizens
offers corporate, institutional and not‐for‐profit clients a full range
of wholesale banking products and services including lending and
deposits, capital markets, treasury services, foreign exchange and
interest hedging, leasing and asset finance, specialty finance and trade
finance.

Citizens operates through its subsidiaries Citizens Bank, N.A., and
Citizens Bank of Pennsylvania. Additional information about Citizens and
its full line of products and services can be found at www.citizensbank.com.

Contacts

Version 2.0 Communications on behalf of Interise
Jen Kaye,
617-426-2222
jkaye@v2comms.com