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.

I was the only woman amongst my peers at the time. But I felt like I could just be myself and it didn’t matter. I brought a mutual respect to my team and really focused on building my network and my team.

I’m most proud of my professional progress during this time. It was a great role to help me take the step from unit manager to district manager. I had always thought I might end up working in human resources because I love to develop people, but I realized I would be able to help more people working in operations. 

I love creative problem solving

In 2004 I was promoted to my current role of district manager. The adjustment from having one client to having many clients, each with different contracts and expectations, was a big one.

I found the second year as a district manager is the hardest. I lost my first contract in a re-bid process. We did our job, but I took it incredibly personally. For me the relationship with the client is incredibly personal and I work really hard to maintain those relationships.

I’m now responsible for managing 250 employees, 33 managers and have 14 direct reports. This team delivers the very best food, hospitality and soft services to our clients across 17 contracts and 25 buildings in the New York metropolitan area.

I like to keep my feet on the ground, close to operations. In big companies it’s easier to change things if you come forward with both a problem and a solution and I’m proud of my ability to do this. I love to throw crazy ideas on the wall and be creative offering solutions.