Her Story
About Stephanie
I have been in the learning and development field for about 15 years, and I currently serve as the Vice President of Learning and Development at Westgate Resorts, where I've worked for 8 years. My career journey began in retail during college, where I started as a frontline employee during a holiday season and was promoted to assistant store manager, which gave me my first experience training and developing teams. From there, I transitioned to Applebee's as a training manager, then spent time at Disney working in operations and training, including some work with Disney University. When I joined Westgate 8 years ago, I started as an operations trainer and have been promoted multiple times through manager of training, senior manager of training, and director of learning and development before reaching my current VP role. In my current position, I oversee all learning initiatives, performance management, and talent management for the entire organization, and my team oversees all the decentralized functions of training across operations, contact centers, and field locations. One of the highlights of my career has been leading the transition from a decentralized training model to a centralized function over the past 18 months, bringing together multiple training teams that previously reported to different operational leaders, and achieving this transformation without any turnover, which I consider a huge win for my leadership.
Her Interview
Ten minutes with Stephanie
01What do you attribute your success to?
I think one of the things that shaped who I am the most today is that I had a kid at a young age. It was very important to me that I wanted to strive to make sure that my son was more successful than I could have ever thought about being. I've always poured into that, into him, and into everything that I do, and I set milestones in my life. One of them was to be a VP by 35, and I hit that milestone. My son is also very successful in his own right - he's 18, he's in college experiencing college life very differently than I ever got the chance to, and he plays college football. Only 7% of high school football players go on to play college football, so I think that's a huge success story for me. This experience has educated me in many different ways that I don't know someone that had what maybe you would call a normal path would have those same experiences and that same education that I was able to gain from that real-life experience.
02What advice would you give to young women entering your industry?
I would say take the chance and be bold, but I would also say really learn and understand the business in where you decide to plant your feet. What I mean by that is, yes, I am the VP of Learning and Development, but I can tell you about the business, and I can tell you what this team does and what that team does, and I can truly understand what's going on in the business. So I think that would be my advice to someone - if you're starting out in this field, being a great trainer or being a great instructional designer is a great thing, but to really truly make an impact, you've got to go and build those relationships and build your network within the organization you're choosing to work in. You've got to understand and be able to talk the language of the business for you to be truly successful in a support function.
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