Megan Mann

I definitely was raised by a very, very good family. So I think having a good family and a good childhood is a huge part of that. I've always felt like I've surrounded myself with people that have uplifted me and not tried to pull me down. I've also been through a lot of difficult things for somebody my age. When I was around a certain age, I went through some very hard things, and it just made me extremely resilient. So, going through some things, and also having amazing people surrounding me during those times, that's what I attribute my success to.

I would say my biggest piece of advice is go into it knowing exactly who you are and what your morals are, and also go into it knowing that people will act like they know everything, but nobody really knows exactly what they're doing. So to not get too intimidated by anything. Another huge piece of advice when you're starting a new job, a new career, is to remember to be a student. You're not gonna know what you don't know. You have to let yourself learn, you can't get down on yourself, you have to give yourself the time to get that knowledge, to get good at things, to learn from people, to soak things in. So all of those things, I think, are extremely important.

The biggest challenge is trying to understand as a young woman what your role is, and trying to break through some of the stereotypes and barriers of people saying that going into your job with your emotions is a bad thing. I definitely think if you are emotionally regulated, that using your emotions in your work can be a good thing. And looking at people and different things as human instead of robotic is an amazing thing. So I think just trying to understand how we do that without being looked at as just, like, oh, she's just a woman, she doesn't know what she's talking about, she's so emotional. I think that's a big challenge for women in any field. It's also challenging when you're dealing with different personalities every single day, both as a boss and then as your guests, your customers, your residents, dealing with those personalities, those emotions, just trying to navigate those things and figuring out the best way to handle different situations that arise, because in the hospitality industry, you never know what's going to happen. You're dealing with so many different conflicts every single day, and things that people can't train you on. Something's gonna pop up new all the time. I always tell my employees, you know, I can train you on everything I've experienced, but there's always gonna be something that's gonna happen that even I've never experienced before, so you just have to learn to take it day by day. On the opportunities side, there's so many different paths that you can take. With just the role now that I have, I'm getting to do a little bit of interior design, scheduling, event planning with the social committee, with my maintenance team I get to learn about how the fire pump works, how the fire control room works, how our generator works. We recently had a snowstorm, and I got to go up to the roof and learn how to fix the elevators. So whether you want to do maintenance, if you want to do something in front desk, if you want to be a general manager one day, I also help with the housekeeping team. There's just so much opportunity to decide what route you want to take, all within the same place, and I think that's an amazing thing.

My biggest value is just empathy. It's leading with good morals. I've had to make decisions very early on in my career to choose to stay or walk away from places that I didn't feel like were morally correct. That's definitely the biggest thing for me, especially as a young woman in this industry. You have to know how to stand up for yourself, and you have to know when you see people being treated a certain way, you're either gonna stand up for that, or you're gonna turn a blind eye, and every single time, I'm gonna stand up and say what I believe is right. Empathy, I would say, is the number one thing, because every single person needs to be spoken to differently, needs to be listened to differently, and it's about having that inside you to know, like, do they need to be listened to, or do they need something back from you? I've always been told in different jobs sometimes that's just how it is, and now that I'm a little bit older, I'm not gonna just settle for that's just how it is. I'm gonna question, well, if I think this is morally wrong, I don't think that's just how it is. I think we can find a better way to do things.