Tami Babij

I graduated from Syracuse with a degree in hospitality management and business, and started my career right out of college in 1995 managing Kelly's Caribbean Bar and Grill in Key West, Florida, which was owned by Kelly McGillis and her husband. I continued managing restaurants across the country at some pretty high-end places - the Little Nell in Aspen as assistant manager, the Greenbrier in West Virginia, and the Breakers in Palm Beach. When I had my kids, I wanted a different sort of lifestyle, so I pivoted into food and beverage sales, taking the background knowledge I had from working in high-end restaurants and dealing with vendors. I've been with my current company, Roar Spirits, for almost 5 years, where I'm the Southeast Regional Director launching a new tequila brand called El Bandido. My typical day involves managing my team of 4 people, working with distribution to make sure inventory levels are where they need to be, reaching out to distributor reps to explain our brand, doing events throughout Florida for brand exposure, and cold calling different accounts - both off-premise and on-premise - working with retailers, restaurant owners, and corporate companies to bring the brand in and successfully pull it through their locations. But honestly, the sales job pays for some of the other stuff - it's not really a labor of love. My real passion is my work with women and domestic violence. I sit on the board of AVDA (Aid to Victims of Domestic Abuse) for 17 years, I was a guardian ad litem for Palm Beach County, and I was nominated for Women Volunteer of the Year in South Florida over 10 years ago. I also run a teen group called SAVE (Students Against Violence Everywhere), which promotes awareness and education in schools throughout South Florida about teen dating violence. I'm also an author and speaker on relationships, narcissism, and domestic violence. My last book is called 'If You Knew Would You Say I Do?' - it's a novel about two women in abusive relationships and how they came out on the other side. I wrote it as a novel to make it more entertaining to read than a straight self-help book. That work, helping women and teenagers, that's what has the most meaning to me.