Discover why developing existing talent within your organization is more valuable than external recruitment, and how intentional leadership investment creates lasting organizational success and sustainable growth.
Her Story
About Kay
Kay Combs-John is an accomplished Executive Operations Leader and Executive Housekeeper at Bandon Dunes Golf Resort in Oregon, bringing more than 18 years of experience leading complex operations, large multi-shift teams, and diverse service functions. Her career spans luxury hospitality, private residential communities, healthcare, senior living, and resort operations, with leadership experience at renowned organizations including The Ritz-Carlton, Marriott, Sea Island, Amelia Island Plantation, Reynolds Lake Oconee, and Bandon Dunes.
She built her career from the ground up, developing extensive hands-on operational expertise and a leadership approach grounded in accountability, service excellence, and practical execution. At Bandon Dunes, Kay leads an 82-person, multi-function organization responsible for housekeeping and janitorial operations. Her responsibilities encompass workforce planning, labor and budget management, purchasing and inventory, safety compliance, quality assurance, training, performance management, scheduling, and cross-functional initiatives.
Throughout her career, she has successfully managed geographically dispersed properties, supported major openings and expansions, and strengthened operational systems across complex environments. Her leadership at Bandon Dunes has also contributed to five internal promotions within ten months, reflecting her commitment to developing talent and building strong leadership pipelines.
Kay is particularly passionate about operational excellence, leadership development, and building systems that allow people and organizations to perform at their best. Her leadership style is hands-on, people-centered, and results-driven, emphasizing accountability, consistency, recognition, and continuous improvement. She brings a practical operator’s perspective to organizational change, process improvement, service excellence, and talent development, creating sustainable solutions that strengthen teams, improve performance, and elevate the guest experience.
Her Interview
Ten minutes with Kay
01What do you attribute your success to?
I attribute much of my success to persistence, curiosity, and a willingness to stay close to the work and the people behind the operation. I built my career from the ground up, and each position taught me something that I carried into the next one. I have never believed that leadership means having all the answers. To me, it means being willing to learn, listen, ask questions, make difficult decisions when necessary, and continue growing even when the path forward is not always comfortable.
I am naturally driven to look at an operation and ask, “How can we make this better?” Whether that means improving a process, solving a staffing challenge, developing a new leader, strengthening communication, or simply finding a better way to support the team, I enjoy turning challenges into practical solutions. I am very goal-driven and detail-oriented, but I have learned throughout my career that successful operations are built just as much on relationships, trust, consistency, and follow-through as they are on processes and standards.
Resilience has also played an important role in my success. Hospitality can be demanding, and leadership often means navigating change, competing priorities, unexpected challenges, and difficult days while still being the person your team looks to for direction. I have learned to adapt, keep moving forward, and focus on what I can influence rather than becoming discouraged by what I cannot.
Most importantly, I believe my success is closely connected to the success of the people I lead. Some of my proudest accomplishments are not projects I completed or goals I reached personally, but seeing someone I coached gain confidence, take on more responsibility, earn a promotion, or realize they are capable of more than they initially believed. Developing people has become one of the most meaningful parts of leadership for me.
Ultimately, I attribute my success to never becoming complacent. I continue to learn, challenge myself, seek new perspectives, and look for opportunities to become a better leader. I believe there is always something we can improve—within an operation and within ourselves—and that mindset has carried me throughout my career.
02What’s the best career advice you’ve ever received?
The best career advice I’ve ever received was to learn every position in the department—not just the position I was responsible for. Early in my career, I was encouraged to understand every role, learn how each position contributes to the operation, and never ask someone to do something I wasn’t willing to learn or do myself. That advice became a foundation of how I lead today.
Learning the operation from the ground up gave me more than technical knowledge. It taught me to understand the challenges employees face every day, recognize where processes break down, and see how leadership decisions affect the people doing the work. It also taught me that some of the best ideas for improving an operation come from the people closest to it. When leaders take the time to listen, observe, and understand the work firsthand, they make better decisions and build greater trust with their teams.
As my career progressed and my responsibilities grew, I carried that lesson with me. Titles may change, teams may grow, and decisions may become more complex, but I never want to become so removed from the operation that I lose sight of what it takes to deliver the service we expect every day.
Over the years, I’ve added a few lessons of my own to that original advice: stay curious, keep learning, advocate for your people, know your worth, and don’t be afraid to step into opportunities that challenge you. Most importantly, leadership isn’t about knowing everything or having all the answers. It’s about understanding the operation, surrounding yourself with good people, listening to them, and creating an environment where they can succeed.
03What advice would you give to young women entering your industry?
My advice to young women entering hospitality is to learn as much as you can, say yes to opportunities that help you grow, and never let a job title define what you can become. Learn the operation beyond your own position. Ask questions, observe strong leaders, understand how different departments work together, and take advantage of every opportunity to gain experience. The more you understand about the business as a whole, the more valuable and confident you will become as a leader.
Don’t wait until you feel completely ready before taking the next opportunity. Some of the greatest growth in my career happened when I stepped into situations that challenged me and required me to learn along the way. Be willing to make mistakes, accept constructive feedback, and continue moving forward. Confidence doesn’t always come before the opportunity—sometimes it comes because you were brave enough to take it.
I would also encourage women to know their worth and use their voice. Ask for the opportunity. Share your ideas. Advocate for yourself and for the people around you. Find mentors and leaders you respect, learn everything you can from them, but ultimately develop a leadership style that is authentic to who you are. You do not have to lead exactly like someone else to be successful.
Most importantly, bring others with you as you grow. Empower your team, recognize potential in people who may not yet recognize it in themselves, and create opportunities for others to succeed. Leadership is not simply about how far you advance in your own career—it is also about the people who are stronger, more confident, and more capable because you helped them along the way.
04What are the biggest challenges or opportunities in your field right now?
One of the greatest challenges—and opportunities—in hospitality today is balancing operational efficiency with the human side of the business. Hospitality organizations are being asked to deliver increasingly high levels of service while navigating labor challenges, rising costs, changing guest expectations, and the need to operate more efficiently. Leaders have to find ways to accomplish more without losing the personal connection that defines exceptional hospitality.
Workforce development is another significant challenge. Recruiting employees is only part of the equation; organizations must also create environments where people want to stay, grow, and build careers. I believe hospitality leaders have a tremendous opportunity to invest more intentionally in training, leadership development, recognition, internal advancement, and clear pathways for employees to grow within the organization. Developing the people already inside our operations can be one of our greatest competitive advantages.
Technology also presents an enormous opportunity. Used effectively, technology can improve scheduling, communication, training, quality assurance, inventory management, workforce planning, and many of the administrative processes that consume leaders’ time. The goal should not be to replace the human element of hospitality, but to use technology to make operations smarter and give leaders more time to focus on their teams and guests.
Ultimately, I believe the organizations that will be most successful are those that understand operational excellence and employee experience are connected. Strong systems, responsible financial management, innovative technology, and efficient processes matter—but sustainable performance comes from combining those things with strong leadership and a workforce that feels valued, prepared, and empowered to succeed.
05What values are most important to you in your work and personal life?
The values most important to me, both professionally and personally, are integrity, honesty, kindness, accountability, and respect. I believe how we treat people matters, especially when no one is watching or when circumstances are difficult. I try to communicate transparently, follow through on what I say I will do, and treat people with the same respect regardless of their position or title.
Empathy is also extremely important to me. Leadership has taught me that you rarely know everything someone may be carrying with them when they come to work. I believe you can hold people accountable while still listening, showing compassion, and trying to understand their perspective. The two are not mutually exclusive. Some of the strongest relationships I have built throughout my career have come from being willing to have honest conversations while still treating people with dignity.
I also value growth. I never want to stop learning or become so comfortable that I stop challenging myself. I believe difficult situations can teach us as much as our successes, and I try to approach challenges by asking what I can learn and what I can do differently moving forward.
In my personal life, family, loyalty, and being present for the people I care about matter most to me. My career has always been a significant part of who I am, but the people I share my life with are what give that work meaning and perspective. I value relationships built on trust, laughter, support, and showing up for one another through both the good times and the difficult ones.
Ultimately, I want to leave people, teams, and organizations better than I found them. Whether that means helping someone grow professionally, solving a problem, supporting someone through a difficult moment, or simply treating another person with kindness, I believe success means very little if we aren't also making a positive difference in the lives of the people around us.
Her Content Hub
Articles by Kay
The Leader Nobody Invested In: Why Developing the Talent Already on Your Team Matters
Recognizing and developing the untapped potential within your existing workforce creates stronger leaders and more resilient organizations.
The Leader Nobody Invested In: Why Developing the Talent Already on Your Team Matters
By Kay Combs-John
Sometimes the next great leader in your organization isn't someone you need to recruit. They're someone who's been standing right in front of you, waiting for someone to recognize their potential.
Throughout my career, I've worked with talented individuals who have spent years showing up, doing their jobs well, supporting their teams, and quietly holding operations together. They become the dependable people everyone turns to when something needs to get done.
Yet sometimes, those same individuals are overlooked when opportunities for advancement arise.
Not because they lack ability. Not because they lack ambition. But because somewhere along the way, their organization stopped seeing what they could become and started seeing only the position they already held.
I've learned that one of our greatest responsibilities as leaders is to challenge that thinking.
When Experience Becomes an Invisible Ceiling
I recently had the opportunity to support the professional growth of a supervisor who had dedicated more than two decades to the same organization.
She knew the operation, understood the team, and had years of institutional knowledge that an outside hire simply couldn't replicate.
Yet despite her experience and commitment, she had remained in the same supervisory position for years without a clear path forward.
What stood out to me wasn't a lack of potential. It was how much potential had gone unexplored.
I began seeing her differently-not simply as the supervisor she had been for years, but as the manager she could become with the right investment, support, and opportunity.
Through conversations, intentional development, and partnership with senior Human Resources leadership, we worked toward creating that opportunity.
She was promoted into a department management position.
And today, she's thriving.
What makes that experience especially meaningful to me is that her success wasn't the result of suddenly becoming capable. She had been developing that capability for years.
What changed was that someone recognized it, advocated for it, and helped create a path forward.
Development Requires More Than Encouragement
We often tell employees that we believe in them.
But believing in someone's potential and actively investing in their development are two very different things.
Meaningful leadership development requires us to take action.
It means having honest conversations about strengths and growth opportunities. It means exposing people to decisions and responsibilities beyond their current position. It means coaching through challenges rather than stepping in to solve every problem.
And sometimes, it means advocating for someone in rooms where they aren't present.
As leaders, we have a responsibility to identify individuals who are ready for more, even when they haven't yet developed the confidence to ask for it themselves.
That doesn't mean promoting people before they're prepared. It means helping them become prepared.
There is a difference between giving someone a title and developing someone into a leader.
The latter requires commitment.
The Cost of Overlooking Internal Talent
Organizations spend significant time and resources recruiting outside talent, often while experienced employees with tremendous potential remain underdeveloped.
External recruitment will always have its place. Fresh perspectives and new experiences are valuable.
But when organizations consistently overlook internal talent, they risk losing something equally important: trust.
Employees notice when advancement feels out of reach. They notice when years of dedication don't translate into growth opportunities.
Over time, that can affect engagement, retention, morale, and talented individuals' willingness to invest their future in the organization.
Developing internal leaders isn't simply a recognition initiative. It's an operational strategy.
Employees who already understand the organization's culture, challenges, standards, and people can bring tremendous value to leadership positions when given the right preparation and support.
And when one employee advances, others begin to see what's possible for themselves.
That creates momentum.
Leadership Is Also About Who Comes After You
Over the years, some of my proudest professional accomplishments haven't been the operational challenges I've solved or the financial goals I've achieved.
They've been watching people grow.
Seeing someone gain confidence in a meeting. Watching a new supervisor learn how to make a difficult decision. Supporting an employee who never imagined themselves in leadership as they begin to recognize their own capabilities.
Those moments matter.
Because the true measure of leadership isn't simply how well an operation performs while we're responsible for it.
It's whether we've built people, systems, and a culture that can keep succeeding long after we've moved on.
I believe strong leaders should always develop their replacements, build their teams' capabilities, and create opportunities for others to advance.
Not because we're preparing to leave, but because sustainable leadership should never depend entirely on one person.
Sometimes the Greatest Opportunity Is Already on Your Team
If there's one lesson I hope other leaders take from this experience, it's this:
Before you look outside your organization for your next great leader, take another look at the people already beside you.
Look beyond their current job titles.
Ask who has demonstrated resilience, sound judgment, accountability, curiosity, and the ability to bring out the best in others.
Ask who might be ready for more with the right coaching and opportunity.
And perhaps most importantly, ask whether your organization has unintentionally allowed someone's current position to define their future.
Because sometimes the difference between a long-serving employee and an exceptional leader isn't talent, experience, or ambition.
Sometimes it's simply having someone willing to see their potential-and invest in helping them reach it.
Kay Combs-John is an executive operations leader with more than 18 years of experience across luxury hospitality, healthcare, senior living, and complex service environments. Her leadership philosophy centers on operational excellence, accountability, talent development, and creating sustainable systems that help people and organizations succeed.
A candid reflection on 18+ years in hospitality leadership, exploring how deep operational knowledge, adaptive management styles, and mentoring the next generation define authentic leadership success for women.
The Best Leaders Know the Work: A Woman’s Perspective on Leading Across Generations
Building Stronger Leaders: One Woman's Journey in Hospitality Operations
I was given a piece of career advice early in my career that has stayed with me for more than 18 years:
Learn every position in the department.
At the time, I took that advice literally. Learn the jobs. Understand the standards. Know what it takes to get the work done.
What I didn't realize then was how much that advice would shape not only the leader I would become but also the way I would navigate my career as a woman in hospitality operations.
Women have always been an essential part of the hospitality workforce, yet throughout my career, I haven't always seen women equally represented in the senior operational leadership positions I aspired to reach. That taught me something early: credibility mattered.
I learned the operation. I learned the numbers. I learned the standards. And I learned to walk into a room prepared to explain not only what decision I was making but why I was making it.
For a long time, I thought that preparation was how I proved I belonged in the room.
Over time, I realized something much more important:
I didn't need to prove that I belonged in the room. I needed to recognize the value of what I brought to it.
Knowing the Work Changes How You Lead
Learning every position doesn't mean a leader should spend their career trying to prove they can do everyone's job better than they can.
Quite the opposite.
It means understanding the work well enough to recognize when expectations are unrealistic. It means knowing when a process that looks good on paper doesn't work in practice. It means understanding how a staffing decision made in an office will affect the employee doing the work several hours later.
And perhaps most importantly, it earns credibility.
Employees know very quickly whether their leader understands what they are asking of them.
As my responsibilities grew, my role shifted from learning the work to building systems that let others succeed at it.
That distinction has become increasingly important to me.
Leadership Cannot Be One-Size-Fits-All
There is another challenge today's leaders are facing that we don't talk about nearly enough: we are leading several generations at the same time.
On any given day, a leader may be working with someone entering their first job, an employee building a career and raising a family, someone in the middle of a major career transition, and someone with decades of experience.
They don't necessarily communicate the same way.
They don't always define success the same way.
They may have very different expectations about feedback, technology, scheduling, career advancement, recognition, and the relationship they expect to have with their leader.
Trying to lead them all exactly the same way isn't consistency.
Consistency means holding people to the same standards. Leadership means understanding that different people may need different things from you to reach those standards.
That has been one of the most important evolutions in my own leadership.
Some employees want independence. Others need frequent feedback.
Some respond to public recognition. Others would rather have a quiet conversation.
Some want the next promotion. Others want stability, flexibility, or simply to be excellent at the job they already have.
The standard doesn't change.
The way I help someone reach it sometimes does.
Women Don't Have to Choose Between Strength and Empathy
For women in leadership, I believe there's an additional balancing act.
Be confident—but don't be perceived as difficult.
Be decisive—but remain approachable.
Hold people accountable—but don't lose your empathy.
Earlier in my career, I probably spent more time thinking about that balance than I should have.
Today, I see those qualities differently.
Empathy and accountability aren't opposites.
Neither are kindness and high expectations.
Some of the hardest conversations I've had as a leader have also been some of the most compassionate. Sometimes supporting an employee means listening. Sometimes it means giving someone another opportunity. And sometimes it means being very clear that an expectation has not been met.
Leadership requires knowing the difference.
Your Greatest Accomplishment May Be the Leader Who Comes After You
As my career has progressed, my definition of success has changed.
There was a time when success meant mastering the operation, solving the problem, or achieving the result.
Those things still matter.
But today, one of the things I am proudest of is seeing someone I've coached or developed step into leadership themselves.
I've learned that leadership isn't about becoming indispensable.
In fact, I think great leadership is almost the opposite.
Build people who can make decisions without you. Teach them what you know. Give them opportunities before they're completely comfortable. Let them make mistakes. Coach them through those mistakes. And when they're ready, get out of their way.
That is how organizations build strong leadership pipelines.
It is also how women already in leadership can help create opportunities for the women coming behind us.
We don't simply need more women to reach leadership positions.
We need women in leadership who bring others with them.
The Advice I Would Give Today
If I could speak to the woman I was at the beginning of my career, I would still give her the same advice:
Learn every position in the department.
But I would add a few things.
- Learn the operation.
- Learn the business.
- Learn the numbers.
- Learn your people.
- Learn how to communicate with someone whose experience and perspective are completely different from yours.
- Don't confuse empathy with weakness or authority with leadership.
- Don't wait until you feel completely ready before accepting the next challenge.
- And when you finally earn a seat at the table, don't spend all your energy proving you deserve to be there.
Use your seat to make room for someone else.
Because after more than 18 years in hospitality and operations, I've learned that the strongest leaders aren't measured only by what they accomplish.
They're measured by what—and who—they leave stronger behind them.
Join Influential Women and start making an impact. Register now.