It's Personal Stories, A Hospitality Podcast

Kimberly Wilson, Senior Vice President, Global Sales, Preferred Hotels & Resorts interviewed by D_ Dowling

• David Kong

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Join me on this learning journey with Kimberly Wilson, a brilliant sales leader at Preferred Hotels & Resorts, as we explore how fostering teamwork and mutual support—within teams and across departments—empowers sales leaders to better support customers, deliver on their needs, and drive meaningful customer success.

Dorothy Dowling:

Greetings. I am Dorothy Dowling. Welcome to it's personal stories, a hospitality podcast that highlights the inspiring journeys of leaders in the hospitality industry. We are a nonprofit organization dedicated to personal empowerment. I am delighted to welcome Kimberly Wilson, senior vice president, global sales, Preferred hotels and resorts. Kimberly, it is an honor to have you with us today.

Kimberly Wilson:

It is an honor to be with you, Dorothy. Thank you so much for the personal invitation to join you today.

Dorothy Dowling:

We are delighted to have you and to have you share your wisdom with our audience. So I'm wondering, Kimberly, if we can start with your career journey because it's been quite a significant one where you've grown from a regional role to now leading the organization on a global level with preferred hotels and resorts. I'm wondering if you can share your career journey with us, highlighting some of the significant milestones that have shaped your path and brought you to where you are today.

Kimberly Wilson:

Yes, thank you for that question. I get that I get quite asked that question quite often in my career, and I'm very fortunate to have started with very humble beginnings in high school. I started my career with a transportation or travel and meetings company within an oil and gas department, which is, which was tentacle oil and gas in downtown Houston. And if you remember early in the. Early 1900s or 1990s, I actually started as an office assistant in the travel department, working under a very dynamic leader by the name of Marsha Doyle. And part of my position at that time, I was attending high school for the first part of the day. In the second half of my senior year, I actually went into work as an intern or office assistant in the travel department. So that's where my first introduction to this love of travel that I now have curated over a span of 30 years have, has derived from early on in that career, I made some really good connections at Teneco Oil and Gas. I graduated from high school, entered into college at University of Houston downtown, and I kept in touch with those that were in the hospitality feel that I had been connected to on the travel agent side as well as the meeting side. And one of the managers of the travel department, I had called him one day and asked how everything was going. And he said, How are you? You're in college now, and I'd like to know if you would come in and be our receptionist. And I said, Absolutely, because I love working with the team. so much. I have made really good connections and friendships with some of the advisers. So during my freshman year of college, I actually returned back to tentacle oil and gas and I worked as the receptionist and I was giving out Paper tickets and delivering tickets to the executive suite. And it was so sweet to have that notion because nowadays people don't even understand what is a paper ticket. So my journey started very humbly and I was not looking to. partake or evolve in this career. But travel found me. I remember working at tentacle oil and gas on site for about five years, and then I transferred to the headquarter office for American Express oil and gas. Because Seneca was awarded that contract with American Express at the time. So I transferred over to the headquarter or the regional headquarter office, and I became the executive assistant to another dynamic woman by the name of K. J. Wheeler Vaughn. And I worked side by side with K. J. For the next five years from 19, excuse me, from 1995 until 2001. And as her executive assistant, I was involved with a lot of meetings, a lot of contract negotiations, taking meeting minutes, and just learning the business firsthand through her lens, her landscape, and just continuing my education through college. So once, had occurred. K. J. Decided that it was time for her to retire, which she had been blessed to do. And I was at a crossroad in my career. Unfortunately, there wasn't another executive position at that location at American Express. So I had to make a decision. Do I leave the industry? Do I stay with American Express and transfer to New York or to Phoenix, Arizona, and being a native Houstonian, those were not options for me. So I stayed in Houston. I reconnected with one of the hoteliers that I had befriended during my tenure at American Express. And we, she was involved in opening a new hotel called Intercontinental Houston Hotel. And I interviewed as an exec, as an office assistant in the sales department at Intercontinental Houston. I had received the job at that time and this hotel was undergoing a full renovation from a Crowne Plaza into an intercontinental property. And when we opened that hotel in April of 2002. prior to that, between January and April, I was involved hands on and getting the decals for the safe creating menus with the chef and creating the compendium for the guest rooms. And at that time with Intercontinental being so small and young, I said, couldn't we just borrow a copy from the Austin or Dallas locations? And the answer was no, we needed to create everything ourselves. From the ground up, every project that I was placed on, it was almost a first that needed to get done. And I just had to find the resources within. So within two months of opening, I had received a tap on the shoulder, on my shoulder from another mentor within the organization who became the spring board of my career. Her name is Pam Gilbert. Another dynamic woman that I had been positioned to learn from, she actually taught me the soft skills of sales presentation wise. She taught me relationship building. She taught me negotiations for, from a transient perspective. And I use that to learn the business travel. And then four or five months later, I was tapped again for executive meeting management, tapped another time for state association. And then I ended the career under a group or national association. So I learned business transient. As well as group sales all within that realm of intercontinental hotel season. From there, I really wanted to elevate in my career and transfer to a director of sales position. And I wasn't able to find that really at the place where I was at intercontinental hotel. So I did have to transfer over to several hotels in order to find what I was seeking within my career, because I thought I had learned so aggressively. I wanted to. Reach for the stars and become a director of sales of a property. And one of the individuals I had interviewed with Mark Lepton at the Houstonia Hotel, which is one of our premier properties. And we do represent that property now with Preferred. I had interviewed there as a sales manager, but I knew that wasn't where I really wanted to go in my career. I really wanted to lead a team because that's where I believe my career was, my career trajection was leading me. So I declined the role at this beautiful, iconic hotel in Houston, and he called me a few months later and he said, Hey, Kimberly, are you interested in still being a director of sales? And I said, absolutely. Are you leaving the Houstonian? How courageous of me, right? And he said, no, I'm not leaving the Houstonian. He said, but I do have an opportunity that I'd like to introduce you to. With preferred hotels and resorts. He said, if you're not able to work with us at this property, I would love for you to, to at least represent us around the world and showcase the property. And from there, I interviewed on the position and. Starting 16 years ago with this company, I have linked in with my former boss. May he rest in peace. His name is Richard White. He interviewed me 16 years ago and really showed me the global aspect of, He said, if you could learn the international segments and it's all about the international business segments, you will be able to really make a lot of headway within this particular role. And he always had his eye on me to lead the corporate sales team, and he pushed and he pushed for me to learn along the way. I also have to give credit to our president and CEO now. Her name is Michelle Woodley. I had the fortunate opportunity to work alongside her and she really taught me a lot of the analytics and technology behind the transient piece, the P and L segment. So I was able to learn some of these grassroots things that I really had didn't, wasn't familiar with in the field. But I had this strong woman who was able to teach me a lot of the technical aspects of the role. Relationship wise, I could build relationships and I can platform them with my eyes closed, but it was more so the technical parts that seemed to occur as well. part of a risk or not a risk, but really one of my weaknesses when I started growing in my career with preferred. So I'm coming from a director of sales, a global sales position, and now into a vice president role about eight years later. And then in 2000, I actually had. Been positioned to take over the corporate sales segment, corporate consortia and entertainment segment and serving now as the senior vice president of global sales for Preferred Hotels and Resorts. Dynamic people along the way have helped me within this platform and I love it.

Dorothy Dowling:

Kimberly, I am so grateful for you giving us that level of detail in terms of your career progression, because there's a few things for me that I would like to just speak about a little bit more. One is just the grassroots training that you have, which I think is so critically important to be able to see at a micro level, how things work, I think empowers you as a leader on a macro level, because you do understand. How a lot of things are actually built at the unit level. I think the, also the part of individuals actually taking that time to invest in you and really build sort of your leadership competencies, as well as that subject matter expertise speaks a lot to what they thought about you as an individual and that you were worthy of their time to make that kind of investment. And I think the last part for me is just your humbleness. Cause you're an amazingly impressive individual. I love watching you on stage, but I just think the way that you started your career as an executive assistant and probably had a really good purview, and I'm sure you were learning. All the way along the line, but I also think understanding gatekeepers because you were obviously one early in your career that also empowers you in terms of sales to understand how important gatekeepers are the respect and deference that we always need to provide to those individuals and understand how important they are to the executives that they support. So I really appreciate you sharing that journey. I'm wondering if there was any kind of personal mantra. Or philosophy that has really helped shape that journey as you have moved along the various steps in your career.

Kimberly Wilson:

It, one of my personal mantras, and this is not a cliche. It's just something that we really should live by every day is to treat others as you would like to be treated. And what I learned early in my career progressing from the hotel side is that I had a major responsibility on my hand. If I'm not performing or producing well within the sales aspect, that could hinder someone else's livelihood within our hotel or within our department. And I did not want that responsibility on my hands. So I never looked at myself and said, I needed to, I wanted to strive and be the CEO one day. I would just want it to work and do better for not only myself, but for others around me. So that if another saying is it, I'm eating well, others will eat well also. So I, I take it very seriously and I want, especially on property, at the property level, sales does tend to get a lot of the glory in everything that we do we bring in the clients that we may be seen as going out on these. Events or meetings or when we travel, it seems glorious, but at the end of the day the notion is that we're working hard to make sure that the hotel operations is functional and that everyone will have an opportunity to Receive the rewards that we're out representing the hotel for. For example, I remember being at Hotel Derek in early in my career and from the valet team to the housekeeping team, to those who were in the restaurants, I made sure to stop by and introduce myself to make sure that they were fully aware of who I was, because when I'm bringing my clients in, or if I was introducing different persons to the property, they were going to be introduced or touched by other departments as well. So it wasn't just my face that was on the contract, but it was in the entire portfolio that, or the entire operations support that needed to be shared amongst that glory. So I am very humble person. Everyone who knows me knows that I'm not about a title. I'm about working and making sure that we get the successes that we need to drive home for.

Dorothy Dowling:

I am sure the way that you approached others in that inclusive way, Kimberly, and making them all part of that client journey was extraordinarily meaningful for them. And I'm sure it was something that was very evident to your clients, too, because you're right, it's a service business, and there's a lot of people involved in executing on the promise that the hotel or the brand makes. So making sure that everyone is fully on board on that commitment. And understands how you have to support each other in, in, in delivering on that client expectation, I think also speaks to your executive leadership, which you probably demonstrated much earlier in your career. I'm wondering, I know you spoke about different individuals that have been very instrumental in supporting your career development, but I'm wondering if there's anything in particular. That you would like to highlight from a mentorship or allyship perspective on individuals that really shaped your growth and your success.

Kimberly Wilson:

Yes I would not be here today. Here at Preferred Hotels and Resorts. And if I did not give credit to Lindsay Uberoth, who is our CEO. She has reviewed her. stakeholders that she believes in the leadership and strategy for the company. And she identified opportunities, not only for myself, but other individuals along our core C level team to excel this company. She has been very fortunate. forthcoming in her direction on how she would like to lead the company for the future. We have great representation of again, wonderful women sitting at the decision making processes for our company. But we also are a company of inclusion and belonging as well as diversity. We actually have a lot of opportunity where we look at different individuals to see how we can be more inclusive, not only internally, but also externally for preferred hotels and resorts and the hotels that we represent along my career. As far as allies, I also have to give credit and Dorothy, you, I may have shared this with you when we were introduced properly or formally earlier this year, but I must say that an outside outsider. I had my eyes on you early in my career because of my GBTA involvement or the Global Business Travel Association involvement. And every time I would see you on stage Oh my gosh, she's just so eloquent, she's so beautiful. You always had a very tenacious way of executing information, and I was looking at it from afar. So I also want to thank you because you didn't even know me. I introduced myself to you a couple of months ago, but I, from afar, what I loved about Seeing different women in different platforms. You had that example for me that you can do it. You can lead a team. You can also be involved. You can volunteer in certain aspects. And I've watched that from afar. And I finally had the switch and said, you can do it also. So I wanted to also thank you because sometimes people think that, because we're leading in different verticals within the hospitality segment that we're going to be competitors. And that's not the case at all. It's how do we link up and how do we become better as the allies that we need to be in the industry. So even though we are past it and cross early, a few years earlier. I was watching you and I want to thank you formally for everything that you've done within our hospitality industry, because you've also paved the way for so many of us that are coming right behind you and wanting to Have the same example at that you have shared along your career path as well.

Dorothy Dowling:

I am very touched Kimberly. I Know I wasn't and It's very kind of you to say that I do think that you are very extraordinary. I have Been impressed with every time I have seen you in terms of any kind of environment, but I also know that the organization that you represent is quite extraordinary as well. You've got amazing leaders that represent a very complex business model. And so I know that all of the leaders that are part of your organization have to have a lot of depth and breadth to be able to meet all of your hotelier expectations. But I think you do that in an exceptional way. But thank you for your very kind remarks for me. And I am delighted if I could have offered anything to you, because as I said, I'm very impressed with what you bring to the table. Kimberly,

Kimberly Wilson:

thank you. And I also, we have a new chief revenue officer. And she has brought really good landscape of strategy and change management to the fold. So now that she has been become on board, I'm also learning different principles that I could utilize in my leadership role. So it. looking at the trajectory of how you can not do something as the same, changing the status quo. She's pushing me to make sure that things are different, but things are different for a purpose and a different reason. And I also have to give her credit because she had a task. Two and a half years ago, coming in from an outside hospitality or hotel industry and having to lead several revenue producing teams, it's not easy. And I want to give her credit also, because she had to come in with her philosophies and make sure that we were able to merge that or, negotiate through some of those change principles that she was wanting to change within the strategy realm as well. So I have to give her credit for the push because without some of those structural changes, I wouldn't be able to probably share some of the things that we're also working on now based on that change management structure.

Dorothy Dowling:

I do think peer mentors are really important to all of us because I do think we all learn from each other and having some of that broader commercial subject matter expertise to really think about the business and the way that you have characterized it, I think, is really the journey that we're all on today. So thank you for sharing that, Kim. I'm wondering if we can talk a little bit about sales leadership because I have great admiration for sales leaders. Because I think it is one of the more challenging roles in the business environment. You have clients that you're trying to support, you have hotel partners that you're trying to support to really build strong business outcomes, but also to build that network competency in terms of serving a client, but hopefully building. The business opportunity for your broader network of hotels. So I'm wondering if there's anything that you might share with our audience in terms of what has been your secrets of your success to really cultivating, that stakeholder engagement, the client networking capabilities that others might learn from you.

Kimberly Wilson:

Oh, thank you for that question. And I often think going back to the intercontinental days first coming into the business travel role or business transient role, I was really good at making relationships. I have no problem with finding friends around the world, but what I had learned early on in my career is that I have to ask for the business. And throughout the philosophy now. What's important to me in this particular position? Yes, we represent 600 hotels at 600 different philosophies, possibly 600 different owners, but how do you cultivate the relationship first? Because people are going to do business with those that they like. And if they know you well, then it's very easy for you to walk into the room and sit down and have some of those tough conversations or even just the easy conversations and getting to the conversations and maybe it transitions into personal to, to, to. Just make sure we're checking on each other. So the one thing that I've learned early on in my career is to form the relationship first. It's going to be important that you know who your customer is. Gone are the days where we have to write everything down in a Rolodex. It should be very easy for us to glean either on LinkedIn or Instagram on something that customer likes that we can either relate to or send them some information that will be relevant to their career or relevant to the space that they're sitting in. The other thing that I'd like to discuss is As we're forming those relationships, it has to be genuine. I form relationships on the premise of I have hotels. You have a business need. How do we merge them together? If there is an opportunity, that's great. But if there's not an opportunity and we still find some commonality within a friendship, Maybe along the way that we'll find some form to do business, but there has to be some common ground on the onset before we can get to the pressure point of how do we really fulfill the business needs? We know there's going to be some type of exchange, but if we're not at the same table where we could be mutual with each other, then we're not starting off at a good position. Within our within my department, I would like to say, and I really in the global sales team as a whole, because within our structure, it comprises of consortia and corporate entertainment and the leisure sales segment, as well as group sales, there's a lot of collaboration that has to take place within the teams in order for the structure to work really well. And in order for us to maximize opportunities with our clients, our teams have to work together in order to see where we can layer in additional opportunities for growth. We have to work alongside our revenue teams, our marketing teams, our loyalty programs. So there has to be some. Stick of collaboration and understanding that we all need to work together in order to see how we can yield the results that our company or organization is seeking from us. So we have to make sure that not only the external stakeholders, which are our clients are going well relationship building wise, but also internally, how are we functioning? How are we communicating? And if that means we have to set different operating procedures or different communication structures, then let's do it. Let's get over, get out of our own way with an obstacle and make sure that we remember the common goal, which is to work for the client customers and then preferred. So that's how we will. I typically formalize my leadership path on how we're going to grow. alongside the clients internally and externally.

Dorothy Dowling:

I think that is some powerful advice that you have given. I do fundamentally believe likability is a really important quality for all successful business executives, Kimberly. But I also think about the intentionality that you framed up in terms of mutual value creation and having an understanding that. It's not always going to result in a transaction. We play the long game, but that authentic nature of having that shared interest in terms of a relationship, as well as a successful business outcome, I think is really great advice. The other aspect that I think I really liked about what you talked about is just the nature of team delivery today and understanding the complexity of the solutions that we have to bring to clients. And so that. Ability to work within the team to build alignment to understand how we have to bring a collective solution back to the customer. That is also really important. It's not in the old days where it was just about availability and rates. And, we used to sell space too, but now we're selling a much broader. Value solution to that customer and, really bridging across all of their needs. So I appreciate you sharing that complexity of what that business journey looks like today in terms of offering that value back to the customer. I wonder if we can talk a little bit about adversity because all of us face it in our career journeys. I'm wondering if there's any lessons that you would like to offer to our audience about potential situations that you had to overcome and how it shaped your journey.

Kimberly Wilson:

Yes. One of the things that I think about adversity often because, the way that the culture is slated sometimes in this world, it can be a little cruel if you're not like, or if you're not in agreement with someone. So adversity. It strikes a different chord being a woman of color. I've not had to experience racism on a firsthand basis until it was 20 years ago in my career. And I had received a phone call from a client at this time, there was not a teams or zoom, but there was a phone call from a gentleman that made a remark and it struck me differently. And it was to the point where I had to overcome. someone's judgment of who I was or perceived notion of who I was, because I knew that it wasn't the truth. And how I overcome adversity from any position is standing on truth. I always tell the team, let's not interpret anything. Let's look at the facts and let's look at everything else. And if the facts are the truth, and that's what we're going to stand on. But we're not going to dance around any assumptions. We're going to make sure that we do our due diligence and work through some of the issues or some of the conflicts that may arise just to make sure that we're not biasing ourselves from a stereotype, or we're not getting personal feelings inside of a business decision. We have to remove that. personal decision or personal reaction and make sure that we're looking at it in a business lens. Because sometimes our history or our experiences will cloud judgment and we have to make sure that we're not making opinions stand forth versus the truth. So adversity to me is one of those Issues, I would say that you overcome adversity with Common sense. You overcome adversity with being truthful. There's no other way to overcome it. Unless, you get a mediator involved, of course. But before we get to a mediator, we just need to make sure that we're coming with good intentions and we resolve issues. With a good purpose behind it and not a vindictive objective. And that's where I think most people should realign themselves to overcome adversity.

Dorothy Dowling:

I think that's a brilliant approach. Kimberly, and I'm sure that holds you in good stead globally Because I think there are many ways that people see different things and sometimes Seeking first to understand, which I personally, that's one of the Stephen Covey principles that I love because sometimes you're right. We sometimes overthink or we bring our opinions forward where that was never really the intention of the individual. So I think that identity of or that process of thinking from a truth point of view, seeking truth, seeking to understand always puts us in a good place. So thank you for sharing that. I'm wondering if we can talk a little bit about work life balance. We ask everyone that's part of our community about how they maintain some kind of healthy work life balance. I think in the role that you have with the kind of travel that you do, with the kind of time zones that you're continually navigating, with the kind of breadth of hotels that you have to support, that you have a lot of demands placed on your work life balance. So I'm wondering if there's any, Where it's a wisdom like you'd like to share with our audience.

Kimberly Wilson:

I don't know. That's a very good question. And I think I'm doing okay with work life balance. And I think I'm in probably the 60 to 70 percentile trying to redefine what does work life balance look like in today's positioning, because we are in a 24 hour, seven day commitment or I should say. Perception that we are available 24 hours a day, seven days a week. And the balance for me now, I have to, because I've had the experience of working on property prior to the 24 seven platform, and I've had the experience of where you arrive into the office, it's between 7 or 8 or 7 and 9 a. m. and you're departing the office between 5 and 7 p. m. and once you depart, you have your life or you have your balance of family that you can focus on or even yourself. Now, in today's time, I have to remind myself that the world will still evolve 24 hours a day, but I am not physically able to keep up with the 24 hour cycle. And I have to make sure that I'm blocking out healthy times for work scope. And if I choose to, Check emails in the evening. I have to give myself a limited time to check and respond the following day. Because of my work ethics and my commitments and my habits, I'm typically a workaholic and working remotely is even more, for me, I found that I'm working. Even longer hours than traditionally when I was on property. So the work life balance, I've had to really be careful to protect my time because now in this stage of my career in my life, I do have a family. I have daughters that are, stepdaughters by marriage, which are beautiful. We don't even call step children. They're just my daughters, but now I'm a grandmother. And so I have to carve out space of family time. That's going to be healthy for my family unit and make sure that my work time is also protected within its space. Also I learned early on in my career that, If you need to put in the time of work, try and do it early in the mornings, on a Saturday morning, that's the days that I try and commit for administrative. If there's any overflow that I wasn't able to achieve through Monday through Friday, then that Saturday morning space is so quiet. No one is expecting you to be online per se. Take that time to really reset yourself to get the weekly plans out, to look forward on your calendar and just reset yourself. And once you do that, you'll find that you're taking the cloud of unsettledness or the cloud of things to do outside of the wheelhouse where you don't feel pressure that you have to. overcommit during your family time. So I, it's just because I've had 30 years of experience and I know when to tweak and when not to tweak. The, you did mention that I do travel quite a lot. The international flights I found are times, a lot of people would prefer to work during the international times. And that's when I find the space to just recharge because I know Once I land, I'm going to be on for X many of hours during the day, typically 18 to 20 hours. And I want to make sure that space that I have on the flight is just time where I just do mindless things because I've worked up until probably departing. On the flight that I want to make sure that I have some space to just reset myself and look ahead on the schedule of the week on where do I need to prepare? And it's almost like a mental break for me. So I do use the flight time to just recharge, but also that's a protection of your work life balance as well.

Dorothy Dowling:

I think your self awareness, Kimberly, and understanding how to manage balance for you is a welcome message to everyone. Cause I do believe it's all an individual journey and we all have. How to manage best for ourselves. But I also think the way that you talk about, scoping out and managing your time and being very intentional about that process, because I do think it, it takes a weight off your shoulders when you try to control as much as you can, you can't control everything, but. Trying to shape and control what you can, I think, gives all of us the more freedom to enjoy that time that we can hopefully invest in our relationships with our loved ones. So thank you for that. We're coming up near the end of the interview now, Kimberly, and we always ask everyone who participates if they were looking back and talking to their younger self, if there would be any different advice or guidance that they would offer to themselves?

Kimberly Wilson:

Yes. This is a very good question to ask because for me personally, I was early on in my career. And again, I mentioned the travel found me, I accepted this beautiful opportunity early on and I didn't really understand. Where I could go or where this journey would take me starting at Tenneco Oil and Gas. I knew I loved it, but I didn't really plan my I didn't plan the 5, 10, 15 year mark. I was just going along having fun. But if I go back to that younger self, I would actually sit down with myself and say, this is a fantastic career, a fantastic hospital industry that you're working in our profession as it's called now. And what are the paths? Who do I need to link up with in order to grow more within the space? Now I would not take away any of the steps that I've endured along today's path to get to where I am. But if I had to speak to myself with No regrets by the way. I would actually have formalized a better career path. I may have traveled a little bit more, meaning I may have turned, I may have traveled to more destinations earlier on in my career to experience different cultures, but I have that now, so I can't really take that away, but I probably would've set up. a different strategy plan early on, because I do believe that the path that I was on is not by mistake. It was by divine intervention. There was a reason why my spiritual God source allowed me to go from one particular area within my career, and I kept meeting the right individuals at the right time that helped position me to get further and further along in this career to where I am today. So the younger me would not be shy. I would be more vocal in exchange of business because at this at the early point of my career, I was just taking assignments without really questioning some of the reasons behind why we needed to do some of the things we did. I would have probably linked up with more partners. Within more stakeholders within that space if I were speaking to my younger self, I would say, take the pressure off as you're learning and as you're growing, because I was such a workaholic that I wanted to do and please everyone. But it was just the natural potential that everyone saw in me. And I wanted to make sure that I was working To the best ability that I could during every step of my career. So there's a lot that I could say to myself, but there, there aren't any regrets. And I think a lot of us look back and say, Oh, I wish I would have done this differently. And I see it as a different perspective because there were. Angels along the way of my career that helped and that identify something in me that I could not see in myself. And I publicly always want to take time to say thank you to them. Because if it were not for them seeing the potential I just probably would have sat along the sidelines and would have been okay with a sideline or I'm not even involved in the industry. I was. I think I had started my university career wanting to go in forensic science. So I probably would have been in the CIA because I do ask a lot of questions. However early on in the hospitality career, I was just having a lot of fun and that shows a difference as well.

Dorothy Dowling:

I think your words of wisdom are extremely encouraging to many people early in their career, Kimberly, because I, sometimes many of us don't know what that big plan is and. I think the learning journey and taking sometimes things as they come and building upon them. I think there's many young people today that aren't sure where there's a there, but they're on a journey. So letting them know that there is an a great career option for them and to continue to embrace opportunities and to, go through the doors that others open for us. I think that's amazing wisdom that we can all learn from you. So thank you for sharing that.

Kimberly Wilson:

Thank you.

Dorothy Dowling:

We're coming up to the end. So I would like to thank you, Kimberly, for sharing your story with our audience. And I'd also like to thank our audience. So if you have enjoyed this interview, I hope you'll come and visit us on our website. It's personal stories. com, where you'll see webcasts and podcasts from many industry leaders like Kimberly that will empower your knowledge and fuel your spirit. So I hope to see you there.