My career in hospitality started on the front desk in Louisville. Over seven years at 21c Louisville I worked every front-of-house role — supervisor, rooms manager, director of operations — learning the brand from the ground up and earning the opportunity to open 21c Cincinnati as General Manager in 2014. What followed was eight years of progressive responsibility across three markets, a global pandemic, a major brand integration, and some of the most formative operational work of my career.
I arrived in years three and four of the property’s operation, tasked with sustaining momentum and building efficiency into a maturing asset. I restructured the workforce, consolidated exempt positions, and engineered labor to flex with revenue — reducing hours by 10,000 year over year without sacrificing guest experience. We cut cost per occupied room by 3.6% through supply sourcing and refined SOPs, and drove ADR up 8.9% through a disciplined yield strategy that leveraged internal compression to favor higher-rated negotiated business.
Guest satisfaction held at 95%+ throughout. Condé Nast Traveler named us #1 Best Hotel in the Midwest in both 2014 and 2015. While running Cincinnati, I continued contributing to 21c’s expansion — consulting on design, managing preopening OS&E procurement for Bentonville, Durham, Lexington, and Oklahoma City, and leading opening task forces to train front-of-house teams and seed the culture at each new property.
Returning to Kentucky as GM of 21c Lexington, I led a property that had become a genuine cultural anchor — 213 guestrooms, two chef-driven restaurants, and 18,000 square feet of contemporary art exhibition and event space, free and open to the public. Both Lexington and Durham exceeded budgeted revenues totaling $18M in 2019 with positive flow to EBITDA.
Promoted to Area GM, I took on dual oversight of both markets while leading the integration with Accor — adapting new standard operating procedures into a training tool administered across all nine 21c properties. Then the pandemic hit. I temporarily closed both properties in March 2020, furloughed teammates, and developed guest experience and safety protocols with the COO and Chief Brand Officer that exceeded CDC and corporate guidelines. We reopened in July 2020 and recovered ahead of both markets — exceeding forecasted revenue, EBITDA, and RevPAR Index in 2021.