Her Story
About Diana
I'm originally from Mexico City, where I started my career in hospitality over 20 years ago. After completing my master's degree in France at Institut Vatel in 2009, I gained invaluable multicultural experience that has shaped my approach to business. This international background has proven extremely valuable in my current role as Senior Manager, Growth and Openings for the Americas at Hilton, where I've been for nearly 4 years. I support hotel openings across the U.S., Canada, Mexico, South America, and the Caribbean, managing 18 to 25 projects in different life cycles at any given time - from new builds that take 2 to 3 years to open, to conversions that flip from another brand to Hilton within 60 to 90 days. My day-to-day involves connecting with commercial leaders across all projects to ensure we stay on track with timelines, and a significant part of my role is coaching and development - I train directors of sales, commercial directors, revenue management, marketing, and catering and events teams, conducting monthly coaching and mentoring sessions to support their learning paths and address any skill gaps. My expertise spans commercial strategy, opening ramp-up, and developing commercial frameworks and tools that help hotels ramp up faster. Before this role, I served as Director of Sales and Marketing for the Canopy Cancun La Isla Hotel, and prior to that as Assistant Director of Sales for Melody Maker in Cancun. My multicultural experience has been essential in understanding different cultures and ways of doing business across the diverse ownership groups we manage throughout the Americas.
Her Interview
Ten minutes with Diana
01What do you attribute your success to?
I attribute my success to a team effort, for sure. The efforts that my family made in getting me the education and providing me with the opportunities I had of living in amazing places where I was able to grow - that foundation was critical. I also have an amazing partner. My husband has been a full rock, managing our son and our house and everything while I travel. I tend to travel quite a bit - we've had seasons where I travel every other week. Having someone that supports you in that way can really allow you to continue growing, especially as a woman. There's this expectation of being the perfect wife, the perfect mom, and on top of it, having a full-time job and being successful in that, too. If you don't have someone that really understands the expectations of making it happen and supports that, well, you cannot do it.
02What’s the best career advice you’ve ever received?
Don't let perfection get over progress. I think it's very common that we try to over-engineer everything that we do, and perfection sometimes just gets in the way of progress. Opening a hotel is something that can be overwhelming for any individual, whether you have experience opening hotels or it's the first time that you do it. The minute that you start thinking that you need to get something perfect the first time, it just won't allow you to continue following up to the other 7,000 things that you need to get accomplished. Sometimes the advice that I give the leaders that I train is just give yourself some grace, and just make sure that you're just moving on. We'll have time to refine and retune most of what we do, because we have time - we prepare for an opening for a number of years. So just give yourself some time, and we'll get there.
03What advice would you give to young women entering your industry?
Network. I feel like these new generations have this expectation of 'I don't want to start from the bottom, I want to be a manager as soon as I finish my career,' and that's not how things happen - at least, it's not how it happened to some of us. Something that people will quickly forget, just trying to prioritize other things, will be networking, meeting with mentors, finding someone that can help you and coach you, and it can be a peer or a leader. But if you stop networking, you will not find the visibility opportunity that you need to continue growing. That's something very powerful.
04What are the biggest challenges or opportunities in your field right now?
The biggest opportunity I would say is more women in leadership. We, unfortunately, continue to live in a men's world. As for challenges, it's an ever-evolving industry that has so many dependencies that sometimes we cannot control for hotels to be successful. If hotels are successful, then growth opportunities appear for all of us. Probably the biggest challenge is to stay relevant, for everyone to keep evolving, to have a continuous learning mindset.
05What values are most important to you in your work and personal life?
Accountability and ownership - I think it's something important that translates not only in work, but in life, in my personal life. If you're gonna say that you're gonna do something, do it. The reward is what matters the most. In Hilton, we have a few values, and I feel like the value of now is very important to me as well. Live the present. Forget about the things that you cannot control. Probably going back to that comment I made earlier about overthinking - just make sure that today you do your best, and tomorrow will be better.
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