Q: What will you be speaking about at DisruptHR?
Personal lives and professional lives, no matter how hard we try to keep separate, have a way of impacting each other. What does your inner circle know about your career and where you work? When the going gets tough, lots of times people turn to their closest personal confidant to talk things through. What can companies do to get an employee’s most trusted people to help with retention?
Q: Tell us about yourself.
A: I’m a full-time working wifey to an amazing husband and mother of two great humans and one dogchild. My job as area director of sales at the Holiday Inn Fargo and Holiday Inn Express – West Acres, under S&L Hospitality Management, has afforded me many opportunities in this community through connections, including this crazy moment to speak at DisruptHR.
Q: Why are you passionate about your topic?
A: I’ve learned from personal experience how much impact my family’s opinion on where I work matters. I also know that I have had the same impact on my spouse. We are each other’s inner circle. As time has gone on, I’ve noticed some major differences in what a timeline looks like leading up to a breaking point. This insight may help as a new perspective of employee retention efforts for certain people, so I’m excited to share key examples in front of a crowd.
Q: What general business advice do you have for readers out there?
A: Marketing to accounting, you never know when you need someone with skills you don’t possess to be willing to help you immediately and like they actually care about helping. Be willing to return favors.
Q: Can you share a specific experience that has significantly shaped your career?
A: In 2012, I was astonished to find out that I had won the national brand Hilton Garden Inn Director of Sales of the Year Award. It put my name on the radar for recruitment firms, which led me to my next position in 2013 as opening sales director of Hyatt Place Minneapolis/ Downtown.
The big deal about that job was that it was the first hotel to open in downtown Minneapolis since the 2008 recession, meaning an opportunity like it hadn’t been available for five years to anyone and I was who they selected.
A few years into that stellar role, a marriage, another baby, and a Super Bowl project later, it made sense to head north to the Holiday Inn Fargo, where I am today, still forming that career shape as we speak.
