Joanne's story: The more I saw, the more I wanted

I joined Marriott* as a cashier in 1983, 41 years ago! It was a job which worked well with my home life as I could commute with my husband, who was working as a chef for Marriott at the time. I worked my way up to supervisor then assistant manager.

My husband was the main breadwinner, I needed to be close to home to coordinate childcare, but I was still able to grow professionally. I got my first management job when I came back from maternity leave after having my first child.

As a working mom, you can sometimes feel like you don’t have all the tools in your toolkit to get the job you want. But I was gathering those tools without even realizing it. I had a lot of great mentors in my managers, and I had the inner drive too!

After a few years I was promoted and took on my first multi-site role for a client within the technology industry. I stayed in this role for 18 years; it sounds like a long time to be in the same role, but it didn’t feel like the same role to me. I was always growing and building on my skills with a huge variety of projects including starting a taskforce for people with disabilities and running mentorship programs.