It's Personal Stories, A Hospitality Podcast

Alexandra Jaritz, SVP Brand Management Asia Pacific, Hilton, Interviewed by Rachel Humphrey

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Alex shares how living internationally shaped her leadership, the importance of advocating for ourselves, and how she developed new skills for success in her latest role. She discusses being humble and authentic and why it is important we commit to our wellness and life balance. Alex discusses strategies for effective public speaking and having a support system with diverse perspectives.

Rachel Humphrey:

I am Rachel Humphrey with d e I advisors. We are a nonprofit organization dedicated to empowering personal success in the hospitality industry. And today I am delighted to be joined by Alex Jaritz, the SVP of Brand Management Asia Pacific for Hilton. Alex, welcome to the show.

Alex Jaritz:

Thank you so much for having me.

Rachel Humphrey:

And to our audience, if you are not familiar with Alex or her background, we hope you'll go over to dei advisors.org and read her bio or check her out on LinkedIn. But otherwise, we are gonna go ahead and jump right in and get started. Alex, one of the things that I really love about the hospitality industry is how unique every path to leadership can be, and mine and yours, for instance, might be completely different, but we might both achieve the level of leadership we're looking for. Tell us a little bit about your background and how you got to the role that you have today.

Alex Jaritz:

Yeah, I would love to. I was born into it. My dad was a in the hotel business, so he managed hotels all over the world. And so at the age of six weeks after I was born in Germany, we moved to Malaysia, then we moved to Jor Jordan, the United Arab Emirates. Spent 10 years in Thailand, then in a year in India. Then I went to the hotel school at. Cornell and then I went to New York City actually, and worked in investment banking and in feasibility for a couple of years. And I think that was good because I realized that. Ultimately my heart was not in investment banking, it was in the hotel business. So after getting my mba I worked for Choice Hotel, so I was there for about 13 years. And was really fortunate because I had an opportunity to work myself up from, coming in at a director level and strategic planning. And at the end I was part of the C-Suite at Choice Hotels. Overseeing all of brands and marketing and owner relations. So it really gave me a great understanding of the business and the various levers to pull to, to to run a franchise organization. And then left choice and had the opportunity to develop a brand from scratch. Called. True by Hilton. I hope you've heard of it. Like quite the success story for us here at Hilton. And really fantastic opportunity to leverage my skillset in franchising in that mid-scale segment. And so I did that for about three years at Hilton. And then I went to my boss at the time and said, listen, I'd love to go back to Asia where I grew up and I have a, at the time my daughter was seven and really wanted to give my family the opportunity to. Live and learn abroad. And so got a great opportunity to move to Singapore and now oversee all of our brands in Asia Pacific. And yeah. And so now I'm here and it's just been an exciting journey

Rachel Humphrey:

What an incredible path and brings up so many great points that I wanna cover with you today. A lot of the maybe career advice or life lessons that you've learned along the way. But I wanna start with the one that jumps out to me right away, which is we hear from a lot of leaders in hospitality right now that living internationally really allowed them to accelerate their leadership from learning to adapt to new cultures to. Leading very different teams than perhaps leading here in the us. Your situation's a little bit reversed cuz you started off overseas and then to the US and then back again. But talk a little bit about how those experiences for you have really impacted your leadership path.

Alex Jaritz:

It's interesting because I actually didn't work internationally, right? So I grew up in Asia. And so I didn't actually have the. Experience of working in the different cultures. So I came in actually expecting to not find it that hard because I lived in a lot of these different cultures, but candidly living somewhere, growing up somewhere versus working somewhere internationally, very different experiences. I think. Look, I would advocate, I know it sounds like it's a big risk to take, but it's really worth the risk in terms of getting that international experience and getting out of your comfort zone. I. A couple of reasons. One is you learn how to work with a lot of different cultures as you mentioned, right? So working with teams in China and how you communicate versus how you communicate with teams in Japan versus in, variety of countries like Southeast Asia or India. The way business is done, the cultural nuances, you just learn. So much about people, how to communicate, how to be adaptable, how to be flexible and it's also a very humbling experience, right? Because at the end of the day, you really are in a situation where, Especially when you first come to APAC as an example the learning curve is so high, right? And so you really learn very quickly how much you don't know. And and then it's really up to you how you form those relationships with different teams across the region and have them teach you as much as you hopefully will teach those teens. It's really, like I said, being adaptable, flexible communication and being sympathetic and empathetic to different cultures and ways of doing business. Such important

Rachel Humphrey:

lessons to learn. And when you talk about learning all of these new skills, I'm curious if as you went from maybe director level or other things up to the Sweet C-Suite as you mentioned, and then also. Into helping to develop a new brand, if maybe you came across skills that you said, you know what? This is not my strongest skillset, but I know that I'm going to really need to be able to master or develop this to the best I can in order to pursue this path to leadership that I'm interested in. And if so, how you set about doing that?

Alex Jaritz:

Yeah, I have a couple of examples. I'll start off with the true by Hilton one because I think that one, I. I, I will say, is one of my most favorite experiences, I think from a leadership perspective, right? Because I came in knowing that Midscale segment. I came in knowing focus, service, and franchising very well. But I didn't know Hilton and I also did really never created a brand from scratch. And so very quickly what became evident to me was I. The importance of creating a highly diverse and inclusive team and assembling a team that, originally we had, I don't know, maybe 20 people and we came from all different functions and different consulting teams, and we were 20 independent people. And then how do you create. I like to call it magic because I think ultimately that's what we created, not just in the team we created, but also in the results we drove. But how do you create a team and what we did was we created a singular vision of very clear vision, and then we also empowered people and said, listen, just because you're in marketing or finance or HR or whatever it may be, All of, you're ultimately still guests, right? And so you all have a voice. It doesn't, you don't have to just talk about HR because you're from hr. And so you started getting, creating a sense of people being vested in something bigger than themselves. We also had people who, maybe were at a point in their career where they weren't sure, or did they still wanna be on a certain path. So we gave people almost another opportunity or a new opportunity and said, listen. Try doing this versus this and see how you do. And so you saw people started coming out of their comfort zone and really becoming their best selves. And when you have a clear vision and a clear mission and you have a team that suddenly are people that come out of themselves, it's magic. It really is Magic people just it became more than a job. And people were so passionate, and so it was one of those, like I said, one of those highlights in my career. What a good

Rachel Humphrey:

lesson to pass along too, that the incorporation of ideas from so many, regardless of background or title or previous contribution can really accelerate. Leadership and a team you mentioned true a couple of times and I always love to share with our audience why I have invited somebody to be a specific guest on the d e I Advisors podcast. And I wanna do that right now with you. Many years ago I was sourcing a panel of executive women. For a women hoteliers event. And what I realized was it was very difficult to find women who held leadership titles in the industry at the time. And I had read an article in a magazine about you and the success of True and I literally cold called you. I picked up the phone and I called and I what I was doing. Yes. And I said, I would really love for you to participate, and you said yes, and you didn't just say yes because. It was important for true or for you, but you talked about how important it was to speak to other women in the industry about really accelerating their career. So I thank you for that, but I wanna follow up on that and talk about public speaking a little bit. How important has that been for you? We hear so often that it's one of the biggest hurdles to others achieving their leadership desires. And how do you. Maybe prepare or not prepare. How do you pick where you choose or to speak or where you don't? What's some advice you would pass on to others?

Alex Jaritz:

So public speaking, definitely super important. I always encourage people, take public speaking classes, whatever it takes, practice at home in front of the mirror. It is definitely a critical component of, when you want to continue to grow your career. The biggest advice I can say is one, know your audience. Don't make it about yourself when you are speaking. Make sure you really understand the needs of the audience and what's in it for them rather than what's in it for you. That's usually equation that works. Practice. That is one of the biggest things I, there's so many times I mentor people. I'm like, don't think you can just wing it. Because most people who look like they're winging it up there actually have rehearsed a lot. So I rehearse a lot, I memorize a lot. I practice on my husband, I practice on, my, my daughter's teddy bears, whatever it needs. No, I practice and practice makes perfect. That would be my biggest advice.

Rachel Humphrey:

That is a similar thing to me. I think nobody's gonna be more prepared than I am, and while it may come across as very natural it is because I know what I'm talking about. That's I love that. And I mentioned earlier your interest in helping women to elevate their own careers. One of the things we hear as a generalization is that women are not good at advocating for ourselves, whether that be. A promotion, an opportunity we wanna pursue salary, other types of things. What would you tell people about maybe advice you could give on how to push through that discomfort or that new experience of advocating for

Alex Jaritz:

ourselves? Yeah, a couple of things. One, I would say believe in yourself. Definitely the first thing. I think secondly, also, make sure there is. There's promotable evidence or there's evidence for the raise. And what I mean by that is you wanna go in prepared you wanna be able to make sure that. You really understand what you have achieved. You really understand what impact it has made on an organization, and that you also make sure you, you script it. And this is another one of those situations where you have to prepare, right? At least I do, reduces the stress because it is a stressful conversation. It hasn't been easy for me to ask for those things. And I think then you also need to be prepared for an occasional, no, it's not time yet. And to be okay with that, to be prepared. That sometimes it won't go your way and then, you know what, try again the next time. And or if it's not with that organization, maybe it's another organization where your skills are more valued or it's a different time in your career, or there are more opportunities somewhere else. I think it's all about knowing your worth and also having the confidence to say it's okay to ask. I think it sounds simple. It's not that simple, I know. But if you don't ask very often, you don't get, and so that's been my experience as hard as it's been also for me to ask along the way.

Rachel Humphrey:

I think that's great advice. But you mentioned something important that you might get a no that now is not at the right time or you don't have the right match. Can you talk a little bit about maybe as a leader with feedback, both giving and receiving feedback in that moment, is it okay to say, can you tell me what I would need to do to get to a

Alex Jaritz:

Yes? Absolutely. And look, frankly, you should know that even before you go into those conversations, and that's something I give. A advice as well is make sure that you surround yourself with, be it allies or mentors, or be it your boss for that matter, whoever it is. Frankly, it should be many of those people. To make sure that along the way you are not surprised when you ask, because you should already be knowing before you asking for an raise or a promotion or whatnot. And I think generally speaking, It's tough for people to give you real feedback, right? It's just, it doesn't seem to be in our human nature to have, and it doesn't even have to be a confrontation, right? It just be a conversation. Same thing when you're asking for a raise. It's not, it doesn't have to be a confrontational thing. But, ask your boss if you're not getting the feedback or you're mentor or do a 360, because then at least you know where you stand. And knowledge is power, right? And so that's always what I tell. My mentors, which is, you should never be surprised. And you should always be aware of what your personal brand is or what people's thoughts are about you. And if you're not getting that feedback, it's also on you to make sure you are getting it. I love this. And the concept of

Rachel Humphrey:

self-awareness too. Yeah. Going in, you should not only be able to sell yourself, but know where you may fall

Alex Jaritz:

short on some of those absolute, absolutely

Rachel Humphrey:

pieces. That's such great advice. Yet again you mentioned a couple things that I think would be great to follow up on and so let's start with mentors, allies, and champions. I know you do a lot of. Mentoring across your teams for other up and coming leaders across other organizations. Talk a little bit in the industry today, not just on the importance of it, but how do you go about finding the right one for you?

Alex Jaritz:

Yeah, so I think it's chemistry is really important, right? You wanna make sure that and I appreciate organizations who try to set up formal mentoring. Programs but that they don't always work, right? Because sometimes you just don't have the chemistry or you just not, may just not find that, that connection. And so what I've always done is go about authentically or genuinely. Finding people that I connect with in the organization. And from there then it just organically grew, frankly. It just said then, Hey, would you like to go for lunch? Can I help you with this project? Or can I ask you some questions? And from there I was, I don't think I was fortunate. I think I, In many cases it was strategic, but you look for the people you connect with or you share common interests with, or you feel you can help out on a project. And so that's what I would recommend is it, if nothing else, if there's not a connection, it just won't be a sustainable relationship. And then I also. Who was very careful to get people on my board of directors in many ways who were not afraid to tell me the truth. And like I said, it's often not in people's nature, especially in the hospitality industry, I find we're super nice people. And we always want to serve. But you serve people oftentimes more so when you give them the hard, you can say it a nice way, but I found that. I know it's a cliche, right? Feedback is a gift, but ultimately it really is because again, knowledge is power. And if you have that insight and you have people around you who tell you the truth, even if you don't wanna always hear it. That's where the real benefit of the mentorship comes from is from that truth seeking, right? And then coming up with how do I help you? How can we solve things? What can we do? What are the resources and so on and so forth. But that connection ultimately, I think is the most fundamental piece that you wanna look

Rachel Humphrey:

for. I think that my experiences have been similar to yours in the mentors and champions I have had, and then those I have mentored and championed have come about much more naturally than a formal process. For those exact reasons. I really appreciate your sharing that. And you mentioned your personal board of directors, which is one of my favorite concepts, only brought to me probably in the last year or so, but that each of us should have. Our own personal board of directors that acts as our support system. Yeah. And I know that you rely, as I do very heavily on yours, talk a little bit about how you identify. I know you said people who give you honest feedback. Yes. But what are the important aspects to you of who you look for in your

Alex Jaritz:

support system? Yeah. I think the most important piece is diversity of thought. Because I've found that just like a real board of directors, right? You wanna make sure that you're getting a spectrum. I tend to be a person, I really like to be very logical, very methodical about making decisions. And so I find the more you have people around you with diverse points of view The better your thinking gets. People who really help challenge your thinking, not people who give you the answer, but people who help challenge your thinking because they come from a different background culturally, or experience wise, or even from, different functions. Be it someone who's a. I have someone on my team who's super focused on wellness. I have someone who's, super focused on the financials in life, right? And so just really diverse background and that's what I've done. And and then some people who frankly are just there to sometimes listen and give you a hug, cuz that's sometimes what you need as well. Because live is not always easy. And so it's again, I think that diversity of thought and inclusion again that's super important to me.

Rachel Humphrey:

And a great way of looking at it is the more people you have in different facets of your life, the more coverage you're gonna have there. And you mentioned having someone on your personal board of directors that's really great with his or her wellness and certainly coming out of the pandemic, we hear a lot more talk. Yeah. About a focus on self-care and wellness. I know I've been talking about it a lot in my own personal opportunities recently, an area that I was not. Strong and historically that I've now realized I could have been much more successful and should have been much more successful at. Yeah. What do you think over time, maybe your focus on self-care and wellness has been, and what do you see today or advising today, maybe some of your mentees or your team members about the role that needs to play in their

Alex Jaritz:

path? It's interesting. Very much like you. I think I I don't think, I know. I didn't really, I. Focus on self-compassion or self-care as much as I should have. And I think when you're a bit younger you think you'll live forever and you go and suddenly you come to screeching halt and you're like maybe I should have focused more on X, Y, or Z. And luckily it's not too late. And and I wish, frankly I had paid more attention to it now. And you know that saying, put on your oxygen mask first so you can help others. As one of my mentors keeps telling me that, and it's so true. But the teams that I mentor now, we focus a lot on, and, wellness is a big term now in self-care, but I think ultimately, we. Focus on balancing work and life, right? Because I feel in the past, my personally, again, so focused on work and now I really work with my team across generations and I have five generations working for me, and we all hold each other accountable. Are you sleeping? Are you eating properly? Are you resting enough? Are you creating that work life balance? You exercising enough? Are you creating joy in your life? Are for me it's, leave it or not yoga. Now, I never thought I would do that, or breathing exercises. I never thought I would really, literally breathe and Yeah. And it makes a real difference, right? And I'll give you one example and it was just shocking to me. I have a 12 year old daughter and we, I was foolish enough to think I'm sitting next to her on a couch, right? We're both sitting next to each other, we're on the phone, and my daughter takes my phone and she's my mom, just because we're sitting together on the phone doesn't mean we're spending real quality time together. And that's a 12 year old. And that was a pretty big moment for me. Like so I keep telling that to my team and my mentees and I think the younger generations is seemingly picking up on it much more than perhaps some of us did 10, 20 years ago.

Rachel Humphrey:

I love the idea too, that work life management isn't just about having a job and being a parent, because I think for a long time that was the work life. Mantra now, like you mentioned, finding joy. So important. Having hobbies or fresh air or hydration or sleep. Such a great way of phrasing it. Just so much more that we have, and in each of those things we become greater leaders. We become better. Better. That's

Alex Jaritz:

we become what you do and you're more creative. More energy, more inspirational, more Absolutely. Calm, just a lot of benefits. So

Rachel Humphrey:

I love that. Such great advice. And one of the other things that, that is fairly new to people's career paths is this idea of having a personal brand. Some of us. Form it into a mantra that we live by each day. Others work very hard at creating or crafting their personal brand, their value system that drives their decision making. Do you think that you've created a personal brand or live by either some sort of personal mantra or brand each day?

Alex Jaritz:

I do. I think at the end of the day my, my mantra has always been, I. Do the best you can. Be grateful for what you have, and always remain humble. Nice. Because, and this is growing up across the world, right? And being fortunate to see how different cultures different countries, different people live. And how fortunate, frankly, I have been and blessed with the life that I have. And Never to take advantage and never to take for granted, excuse me. What I have, right? And to continuously be grateful and humble and not expectant. I think that's one of the things that is one of my pet peeves is expecting things, right? We should, at the end of the day, all be grateful and humbled because if you stay humble, I don't know. That's, it's my personal mantra, just to remain humble and authentic and true to yourself. I love

Rachel Humphrey:

that. That's such a great way of looking at things as well. We are getting close to wrapping up today, and one of the things that I love to. To be asked. And then, so now I ask everybody in return is advice to our younger selves. And the reason I love it so much is I do think we are all works in progress. I think our own personal growth at different times in our lives, in our careers is really impactful. And so as you look back at 21 year old, Alex, what would you tell her either about how things turned out or something you wish you knew then that would've made the path? I don't wanna say easier for you, but maybe a little less bumpy for

Alex Jaritz:

you. Two things, definitely the, make sure you put on your own oxygen mask. So we talked about the, self-compassion and self-care and the criticality of that, even at a younger age. But then I think the other one is embracing failure. They're always, at least for me, I always wanted to be. The perfectionist, the best. And I think with that came that fear of failure. And I think that put too much, I put too much pressure on myself. And sometimes, you know what, it's okay to fail because you learn more frankly from those failures. You learn a couple of things, right? You learn what you did wrong, but you also learn resilience. Yeah. And you learn how to pick yourself up. Dust yourself off and just get on with it. And I think that's where I often find I admire people the most when they fail and they get back up and they do it and they learn from it and they make a difference and they move forward with a positive attitude. So not being afraid of it, not seeing it as a sign of weakness, but of a sign of strength.

Rachel Humphrey:

And none of us achieves any level of career success or satisfaction without lots of failures. So learning how to, use them as strengths, use them as opportunities, be curious to do it differently. Is not only going to happen to every one of us. Every day, if not more. Yeah. Such an important lesson to share with your team as well, or your mentees as well, who might look at you and say, oh, look at Alex. She's had this, and not realizing maybe some of the less

Alex Jaritz:

successful steps that you've had along the way. There were quite a few. There were quite a few. For all of us. For all

Rachel Humphrey:

of us, yes. Yes. As we sit here today thinking about the motto of d e I advisors to empower personal success, is there any final words of advice you'd have for our audience?

Alex Jaritz:

Look, I think the only other thing I would say is be curious. Continue to. Be a sponge. Continue to learn. Continue to learn as much about, the world around you, the functions around you, the business around you, the people around you. Cuz the more curious you are, the more fruits will come from that knowledge that you gain, it's never stop having that passion for learning.

Rachel Humphrey:

Wow, that's such an incredible way to end today. Alex, on behalf of a hospitality in industry, on behalf of my own career, thank you so much for continuing to be such a strong leader, such a strong advocate for women, and of course for supporting the mission of d e I advisors today. That's

Alex Jaritz:

my pleasure. It's great stuff that you're doing, so super happy to be here and supporting all of you and everyone out there watching. So thanks so much.

Rachel Humphrey:

And to our audience, if you liked what you heard today, we hope you'll go over to dei advisors.org and hear from the over a hundred industry leaders who have shared like Alex has today, their journeys and their lessons they've learned along the way. You can also stream d e i advisors on your favorite podcast streaming channel. So for today, I say thank you so much to our audience for joining us, and thank you again,

Alex Jaritz:

Alex. Thanks so much.