Q: Can you tell us a bit about yourself and your current role?
A: For both properties, I continuously strive to develop corporate and association business relationships to keep our hotels thriving. As team lead, I work with a dedicated sales department to ensure all segments are getting the attention they deserve, so that we never miss an opportunity to welcome and service new business.
Q: How did you become involved with YPN?
A: My family and I moved to Fargo in 2018. While having a taste of North Dakota during my years at UND, I was still completely new to Fargo, West Fargo, and Moorhead. I needed a way to get to know the community better. YPN does a great job utilizing other Chamber business locations for their events. Diving in helped me learn about what was available around town and who some of the people were.
Q: What motivated you to choose your current career path?
A: First: freedom! Then: free food!
To elaborate: When I first started working in a hotel, I was at a small highway property with 42 rooms, no restaurant, and no meeting space. I was the sole employee from 4 – 11 p.m. It was a defiant teenager’s dream to have that little management over my head. But, boy did I grow up fast with some of the situations I encountered.
When I got to college, I started working on the banquet side of things while doing a sales and marketing internship. This sounds silly, but I stayed through the toughest days because of the leftover banquet food. When I’m able to have access to prime rib while being such a broke college student who was putting myself through school, you don’t walk away from that!
Sales in hospitality attracted me for many reasons, yet many would tell you that my ‘gift of the gab’ lets me thrive in this role, but would be a curse to get me into a lot of trouble in other types of positions. So, seemingly by default, here I am doing a job where I get to talk a lot and use my naturally extroverted nature to meet new people for a living.
Q: Can you share a significant challenge you’ve faced in your career and how you overcame it?
A: Working in the hospitality industry during the pandemic was a really trippy experience. I watched literally millions of hoteliers across the globe lose their jobs within a week. At the Holiday Inn Fargo, we had over 300 staff members on March 1, 2020. On April 1, there were 12, I was one of those 12. We who remained suddenly became every position of every department each day, working longer hours for less fruitful outcomes for months.
We somehow stayed positive through it, adopting a slogan of “be the spork” (the utensil that acts as both a spoon and a fork) which has stuck around to this day—we even make trophies for it. We said “yes” and accommodated every piece of business that we could. Turns out nothing will ever stop love or hockey. I’d work with brides who were still hearing ‘closed’ from their reception halls in MN when the ND occupancy laws were more lenient and we’d have their entire game plan recreated here with a 20-day notice. I’d listen to what I called Doug Burgum’s Wednesday “Fireside Chats” to know exactly what occupancy laws we were working with that week and set up spaces accordingly. I begged and bargained with every trucking company in town to move their business in because I knew their industry was still alive. We pleaded with offices that were no longer going to have an off-site holiday party to let us cater in their offices. These are just a few examples of the hustle that went into recovery. We did everything we could to work our way out of the shutdown and by 2023, put up record-breaking revenue numbers that this hotel has never seen in its 50 years of existence.
Q: How do you stay updated and continue to grow professionally in your field?
A: There are industry-specific organizations in the Twin Cities area that I still like to attend. I find the Global Business Travelers Association North Central Chapter (GBTA-NC) and Meeting Professionals International Minnesota (MPI-MN) to be two of the best for my work updates. My goal is to have a significantly stronger GBTA presence in North Dakota in the next few years, and in the last year, I may have finally found a few other enthusiasts to turn that dream into a reality.
Locally, I enjoy attending many of the summits that the Chamber puts on. Many of our largest convention clients deal in the agriculture, banking, or medical fields, so I find that attending these summits gives me a glimpse into the worlds in which I’m working. It helps me better understand what we might expect out of certain attendees each year depending on the socio economic climate of their own industries.
Q: What has been your most rewarding experience with YPN so far?
A: I have been so fortunate to develop the friendships that have formed during my time with YPN. Some of us have bonded to the point where we choose to hang out outside of sanctioned events. There have been people that I never would have met if it weren’t for this club—I have now gone to things like comedy shows, murder mystery events, charity events, concerts, etc. I even have future plans on the books right now. I am genuinely grateful for the sense of community that has been built around me because I decided to jump in with both feet.
Q: How has being a part of YPN impacted your professional network?
A: I am proud to admit that sleeping rooms, meeting spaces, and catering referrals have all sprouted up during my time as a YPN member. There’s even been a job referral or two that almost convinced me to move on. Through all the professional and personal connections built up, I know the network will come in handy in the future.
Q: Can you share a memorable connection or opportunity that arose through YPN?
A: YPN has helped me grow professionally beyond just building a network. It has also helped me hone in on certain professional skills that I don’t get many opportunities to work on in my day-to-day work. One of those skills is public speaking. I joined the Recruitment Committee in 2021 because I knew it would put me in front of business office crowds of various sizes as our team presented our “Why Join YPN” spiel.
At one point, I had the opportunity to present in front of over 130 people at an association conference, encouraging them to go back to their respective places of business and spread the word about YPN. I’m pretty sure my entire esophagus zig zagged, and I had to step away from the mic for a second to compose myself. I battled through but went and cried in the car as soon as I was done because it literally scared the sense out of me.
Since then, I feel my fear of public speaking has faded and now because of these moments of ‘”practice,” I will attempt to present in this year’s Disrupt HR event in front of what is supposed to be 300+ sets of eyes and ears. I would have never even bothered to apply if I hadn’t had these last three years of recruitment presentations under my belt.
Q: Where do you see yourself professionally in the next five years?
A: I would like to see myself in a more regionally focused business development position, including overseeing an expanded team of other professionals. Maybe by then someone will have gifted me a “Boss Lady” cup, which I’ve always wanted but refuse to purchase for myself, that’s crass.
Q: Any final thoughts or messages you’d like to share with the community?
A: I’m going to put on some different “hats” of mine and speak about my two latest passion projects.
First, I’m serving my third year as a board Member for the not-yet-built Fargo Moorhead Science Museum. This community needs to grow, and there is more that people can do to help this dream come to life than they think. I encourage anyone reading this to go to fmsm.org to learn more about this “regionally focused, globally relevant” structure that some great minds are trying to fundraise to get opened in the next few years.
Second, the more immediate needs of this community directed my attention to the Board of the Furniture Mission of the Red River Valley this past year. If you have household furniture that you are going to part with that may be in good enough shape to be re-homed, please reach out to furnituremissionrrv.org to schedule a pick-up or to find where to drop off.
