Inspiring Women in Hospitality

On this episode we hear from Lada. She studied to be a lawyer, but very specifically a lawyer in hospitality. At the start of her career, she spoke up about her interest an asked for every hospitality project. Her career has taken her from Ukraine to Dubai and now Singapore and now works on projects in 27 countries. She has learnt that she has resilience and courage, with every move she made, and...

On this episode we hear from Radhika. She is an entrepreneur with sustainable impact solutions for the hospitality and travel market. This was her intro statement, succinct, with enough information to want me to ask her more. She has been in and out of hospitality throughout her career, but she came back to it in the end, like a boomerang. Throughout her life she always had curiosity and concern i...

On this episode we hear from Maysun. She runs an architectural firm and hospitality business in Dhaka simultaneously. For her school project she built a hotel, inspired by her family business and wanting to build something. She studied architecture in LA for seven years before returning to Bangladesh to start her own firm, her first project was a garage and through word of mouth she has gone on to...

On this episode we hear from Apichaya. Her love of backpacking led her to open her own hostel in Koh Tao. She loved the community, the people and identified a gap for a nice hostel in Koh Tao and with the support of her family she just went for it. Along her travels she would always ask to speak to the managers to learn more about the operations and the rest she learnt along the way. After two yea...

On this episode we hear from Eva. She takes us on her career journey that spans across the UK, Germany and Switzerland. Having graduated in the midst of the GFC it was hard to find a role, and once she did find her ideal role, she then had to have the very brave conversation with her then current employers she was leaving, which is hard to have at the start of your career and during an economic cr...

On this episode we hear from Catherine. She started her career as a business journalist, and she was drawn towards travel and hospitality after she moved in Thailand and immersing herself in each destination. She then joined Quo, a creative branding agency and her career just grew organically from content to now Chief Branding Officer. She shares with us her journey, which grew alongside the compa...

On this episode we hear from Karin. She knew at the age of 10 that she wanted to go into hotels, and she ended up going to Hotel School de Hague to study hospitality. She takes us on a journey of her impressive career across several continents with different brands and different roles. She now finds herself at the Le Meridien in Dhaka, my father's home and one of my homes. I am so proud to bri...

On this episode we hear from Emily. She fell into hospitality by accident because she needed a job when she was a teenager and there was a hotel nearby. However, she did realise through the experiences she created that there was a a career here. She went onto study at the University of Surrey, which included a placement year at CBRE and that eventually led to her first role after graduating in mar...

On this episode we hear from Katherine. She likes long walks in the country and the hospitality industry. Its full of good and welcoming people. She originally started in the music industry but realised that it wasn’t good to combine your hobby with your work. She worked as a paparazzi at one point, to help fund her education. She then found herself in the hospitality industry and stayed. She has...

On this episode we hear from Sophie. From a young age she was fascinated, or as she called it conned into the glamour of hotels. Every school vacation spent staying in different hotels in Penang, she turned to her mother one day and said that she want to be sitting behind that desk in the hotel lobby one day. Whilst she did go into hotels, her career path took her into F&B. Several years in Ma...

On this episode we hear from Nina. She takes us on her career journey that started with event planning, before moving into hotels. In hotels she got into digital marketing where she worked closely with the sales team to support their goals. After completing business school, she joined Amex in Hong Kong and was exposed to so many different countries, cultures, and languages during her three years t...

On this episode we hear from Giada. She wanted to be a nuclear engineer, but she found herself in interior design and in hospitality and never looked back. She loves the diversity of space you can design in hospitality, whether it’s the room, restaurant, bar or wellness area. Each project is new and you adapt to the space, location, property, client or strategy. Her challenge is to make the space...

On this episode we hear from Noelle. While she may have a masters in architecture and engineering, her true love was hospitality. To her hospitality is making people happy. She recognised that being in an environment where we are creating these happy experiences, was good for her mental health too. During her career she has used education every 3 to 4 years as an opportunity to learn, self reflect...

On this episode we hear from Judith. Early travel experience made her want to have a career that was international. She shares her journey across three different continents with a focus on revenue optimisation. We talked about the importance of mentors and how they have inspired her and helped guide her throughout her career. She has also played the role of mentor in her career and empowered the n...

On this episode we hear from Sowon. Instilled by her family and culture, she has always been passionate about education. After a few years in private sector, she did her phD which then led her to her academic career. The topic of her thesis was around career strategy and networking. Some of her findings were that men understand faster the importance of networking at the start of their career compa...

On this episode we hear from Erika. She was determined to come into hospitality, driven by a desire to travel, no matter what obstacles the universe threw at her. Her early career years in London were most in events and sales and then she made a move towards hospitality technology and did not look back. She feels that still today there is a disconnect between hotels and technology companies and mo...

On this episode we hear from Domenica. She shares her career journey that has taken her in hospitality, real estate, retail, commercial, concept and lifestyle brands and now her own coffee business. She says it herself she 'never says no to an opportunity' and that is part of her experience. She has faced challenges along the way, each time proving herself successfully and with finding the...

On this episode we hear from Huilin. She shares her experiences of working in a family business for the past 17 years, where she is now Group CEO. The business was started by her mother 35 years ago with very humble beginnings to becoming an internationally recognised brand, from whom Huilin draws a lot of inspiration. Her and her brother were handed the keys to the business just before COVID, whi...

On this episode we hear from Shell. Her family, of Italian heritage has always been in hospitality, working for the royal families, and now she is the chosen one of her generation to carry on the tradition. She has worked at some incredible hosptialtiy businesses in the UK and shares with us her learnings. She shares with us what the industry can do to encourage more to come into the industry and...

On this episode we hear from Nathalie. She has worked across five continents and shared that she found it easier to manage a multi-cultural team as its the differences that help gel people together. While many of us may work part of pre-opening teams, she worked at the Savoy as part of the closing team ahead of its multi-millions pound refurbishment. When I asked her how to inspire people to come...

On this episode we hear from Caroline Zwierz. She shared her career journey that started in auditing and then took her to revenue management, both underpinned by her capabilities in numbers. She shared her experiences of managing a team in India and Hong Kong, at separate points of her career and her role of giving guidance, direction and offering a different perspective. Whilst she worked in many...

On this episode we hear from Andrea Belfanti. She took an intro to hospitality course in university and she was hooked. She went onto work in events in clubs, art museum and hotel companies before joining ISHC, where she is now CEO. We discussed how we were both attached to our jobs and associated it with our identity, while its still a learning journey she has learnt to incorporate more boundarie...

On this episode we hear from Philippa. We bonded on our shared experiences of being a third culture kid, the highs and the lows. In some ways you do not belong anywhere, but then you are lucky to have many homes. Her first experiences in hospitality was when her parents bought a B&B in the english countryside and that became her home. She loved interacting with the guests and meeting new peopl...

On this episode we hear from Cristhian. She chose a career in hospitality because she likes to travel and being exposed to different cultures. Her career journey took her to ten different countries and she has made herself a career in operational excellence. She shared with us some early experiences on being on the executive committee and using data to support her insights, to come across confiden...

On this episode we hear from Bousserind. Because of her father's job their family moved every few years and it was one of those roles that brought her to Switzerland, which she loved so much that she decided that she wanted to go back someday. The way she saw of going back was to study hospitality management. Whilst she did not manage to get back to Switzerland, she stuck with her choice of ho...