Uniting for Impact: The Creation of the Women in Hospitality Leadership Alliance - Rachel Humphrey

Josiah: I want to thank you, Rachel, for taking time to chat. I've learned so much from you, from what you shared on LinkedIn, from the interviews that you've done through DEI Advisors. And so I've been looking forward to this, and I appreciate you taking time to talk. I guess for our listeners, can you tell me a little bit about yourself, what you've done over your career, and then let's talk about where you're focused now. We have some exciting topics to cover, but I want people to kind of get to know you a little bit. So tell us a little bit about yourself.

Rachel: First of all, thank you for having me and for all of the work you're doing showcasing incredible leaders in the hospitality industry and sharing stories and insights. Storytelling is such an important part of how we learn from each other, but also how we grow ourselves. So thank you for doing that. A little bit about me. I always tell people I was born in a small town in New Hampshire. I grew up long before Internet and social media and cable TV and all of these things. So just a completely different generation. My family put a huge emphasis on education. I went to law school straight out of college. I've joked I didn't know any lawyers. I think it might have been too many episodes of Night Court and L.A. Law. I'm not really sure. But then went and started practicing in Northern Virginia. I was a trial lawyer there for three years, and then my husband and I moved to Atlanta. And for the next 17 years, I worked at a firm here in Atlanta doing trial law as well. I loved my career as a trial lawyer. I think I was very good at it. But one day I didn't love it as much. And it really surprised me. I thought I would die in a courtroom. You'd be wheeling me out at 100 years old. And there was no other home I could really see myself. But it really caused me to do a lot of reflection and try to figure out why that was. I definitely didn't figure it out then. I think in hindsight I have some answers now. I had never looked for a job with a job. It was a strange thing that I think to this day is very unique to me and I decided given some opportunities to step down from my role at the law firm and take some time to figure out next steps. And I spent a lot of time doing one of the things I hate most, which is networking with people I don't know, but I wanted to hear how were people using their law degrees? What other types of law was there? For some reason, at 45, I thought I was over the hill and no one would hire a woman who had only ever done one thing before. But I had an opportunity to really be inspired by a former trial attorney, a woman who was leading a non-profit organization and she talked to me a lot about transferable skills and being an association executive, two things I had never heard of before, and it gave me an opportunity to start really seeing if I might be able to do something a little bit different. I came across an opportunity that AHOA had was for an entry-level franchise relations specialist. I had a real knowledge of franchising from my legal practice. I'd represented a lot of hotel owners. I'd represented AHOA at times. And to their credit, Chip Rogers now, of course, the CEO of AHLA the HR team created a fantastic opportunity for me. And that started my journey into hospitality in this angle, as opposed to in the trial work that I was doing. And I spent seven years at AHLA first as the VP for Franchise Relations, and then as Chief Operating Officer, spent a year as Interim President and CEO, and then took advantage of an opportunity to retire in 2021. And now I'm doing some incredible nonprofit work again, some volunteer work this time, but really just an extraordinary, hard to believe 30 years in the industry now, 30 years over two different careers and brings me to where we are today.

Josiah: I love it. Well, there's so much we could talk about. I would like to talk about a while back, you kind of had less familiarity with kind of the world of associations and what they can do. It's really cool because I was sort of in the same boat. And as I've gotten to learn more, you see the power of organizing people, representing people. It's really cool. I wonder if we could talk a little bit about the Women in Hospitality Leadership Alliance, what it is and then how did it come to be?

Rachel: Oh my gosh, I could talk about this one all day. After I retired, I took a self-imposed hiatus from hospitality to really decompress, get my self-care back on track. And as I was coming out of that hiatus, there were some significant announcements for leaders of brands, management companies, associations. And none of those announcements were women. And it really surprised me, I think, because there had been such momentum in the conversation at that time. Also, there were so many incredible leaders, female leaders, really at the top of our game at that time. It also seemed like some of these Brands and associations were really perfect opportunities. And I knew some women had been in the final consideration for those roles. And so I thought maybe I could use a little bit of time during retirement to volunteer some time with some organizations that I knew were doing really good work, possibly my relationships or my reputation might help whatever they were working on. And I reached out to a few that I knew well. from my time at AHOA. And in those initial conversations, I realized that I couldn't quite tell the difference between what some of them were doing. There seemed to be a little bit of overlap. And what I realized, the operational brain, the COO brain came out, and I realized that they had not been collaborating together. I don't think intentionally. I think for a lot of these organizations, it is somebody's side hustle, if you will. They also all have corporate jobs and, you know, families and other things, but also there just really hadn't been the opportunity for collaboration. And so I asked them if they would join me together on one phone call. To their credit, the five organizations all said yes. And honestly, it is not an exaggeration to say within five minutes, we knew we were on to something. The opportunity to collaborate, to share, you know, at a time that human resources and capital resources are stretched so incredibly thin, we're never going to be on opposite sides of any of the initiatives that we're all looking to undertake. But coming out of COVID, you know, you heard so much about stronger together. And to me, that's all I kept hearing in my head was stronger together. And so we had a call. It was incredible. We saw where there was some overlap. We saw where there were some open opportunities. And we decided to make it originally just a regular phone call that we would check in with each other. But then we started hearing about more organizations, some I'd never heard of before, others I had. We started bringing other people onto the calls. They would then introduce us to other organizations that were doing it. And that led to the formation of the Women in Hospitality Leadership Alliance really in December of 2021. We are now 30 organizations, which is incredibly hard to believe, but all doing incredible work on their initiatives, their mission, and their vision, and then coming together to help amplify one another in hopes that we can move the needle a little bit farther and a little bit faster together for the industry.

Josiah: I'd love to get your thoughts on the power of the diversity of these different organizations, because you have a whole range from newer ones that are smaller, just getting started to very large ones. Why not just make one of these organizations really, really big? Is there some unique advantage you see on having a diversity of organizations involved?

Rachel: Well, I love the phrase constellation of organizations. I may steal that from you. Each of them, as I mentioned, has their own initiatives and mission. But the great thing is that they cover different areas of the industry. So you might have some that are brands. You might have others that are associations. You might have some that are looking to build skill development. You might have some that are working on access to capital. It just covers such an incredible breadth of the industry that they're not actually all doing the same thing. You have some that are incredible storytellers that have podcasts and educational resources. You have others that offer networking resources. So really the power of collaboration is that you bring them all together. And there's this incredible volume of information and resources available to those in the industry. Whatever you're looking for, I guarantee you one of these organizations has it. And that's the nice thing about the website too, is we put live links to each of the organizations on the website. You can see what each one has find out what's out there as I mentioned networking events webinars resources interviews like these are so many incredible resources that are out there just makes it easy for everyone to find, but it doesn't take away from what any of them are doing on their own I mean I think. Could you one day have one large organization doing it? I suppose possibly, but if you're really focused on what you do well, your lane, if you know what your mission is, who you're trying to serve and what you want to accomplish, you're going to really be able to focus. If you get too spread out, it's going to be much harder to be effective, in my opinion. I'm sure some people would disagree.

Josiah: I love it. How would you articulate the future that you want to see that you're leading all of these organizations toward?

Rachel: It all comes down to having top leadership and ownership be representative of the industry as a whole. So we know that at the entry level, hospitality as an industry is incredibly diverse. But as you climb the corporate ladder, it becomes less and less. So I think the idea or the goal at the end would be that across corporate leadership teams, regardless of what type of company, whether it's brands, management companies, real estate, valuation, data, whatever it is, that there is a very diverse leadership team, that there are diverse boards, diverse ownership groups. Diversity covers such a wide range of factors. But I think the goal is that at some point, the industry leadership is much more reflective of the U.S. population and, of course, of the hospitality industry population.

Josiah: I'm very curious when you talk about kind of your operational hat went on, you got people on a call. Are there other things that you've done practically to encourage collaboration and to get the most out of these organizations working together towards this goal?

Rachel: Well, we meet quarterly. We plan far in advance. We can have as great a participation as we can on each of those calls. We share pre-reads before that, which are updates on what all of the organizations are doing. If there's an ask of other organizations, how that can be. We have a communication channel, a closed channel that allows us to both share successes, but also make asks within it that allows for Communication to the entire group. We've got a great directory that makes it easy to get in touch with each other directly. But what we also see then is a lot of the organizations partnering with each other. So if you see a lot of the conferences coming up, you'll see a lot of the leadership of other organizations participating in those. We see a lot of engagement on LinkedIn and other social media channels. We push out each other's newsletters to our readership so that we can try to gain readership for those. Same thing with podcasts and other forms of communication. We share awards, notification on awards so we can celebrate one another. So there's a lot of grassroots partnership that's going on. And then we also see a lot of them working in groups of two, three, four. If you see a lot of the upcoming events, you'll see a lot of the leaders who have really met each other for the first time through the alliance.

Josiah: It does seem it is all about getting people to get to know each other so they can collaborate. There's a certain amount of trust and relationship that is needed for that. As you look forward, what are you most excited?

Rachel: I think one of the things for me, too, that was very exciting was to hear some of the organizations pivot their direction after they joined the alliance, where they were able to see what other people were already doing, or they had an idea of something for next year, and then they heard someone was already doing that. Well, that doesn't make sense. reinvent the wheel or duplicate efforts that are already out there and if we can share those resources or if we know what the others are working on you are always going to maximize impact by really making sure that you're focusing on things that are the best use of your time and of your resources so I'm actually always really optimistically encouraged when I hear somebody say they're not going to do something because somebody else is already doing it, then I know the power of collaboration is working. But where I also see people filling lanes, we've definitely had some organizations come in who said, is anybody doing this? And it's a clear need that the industry has and or that these initiatives have and nobody is. And they say, OK, then we're going to step up and take the lead on that particular thing. And so that's been really exciting to watch, too, of the had that collaboration not been happening, there's a possibility, again, we'd either have duplication or we'd have these voids of places that can really be making an impact.

Josiah: For those listening, what is your ask in terms of, let's say they love this, they want to support, they want to get involved, what would be your ask of the Hospitality Daily audience and how can they get connected to and support your work?

Rachel: I think from the Women in Hospitality Leadership Alliance, it would be to, again, go to the website, it's whlalliance.org, look into the organizations that are doing great work, support them, whether it's signing up for a newsletter, follow them on LinkedIn, go to one of their local events, go to one of their national events, really see what they're doing. I mean, the volume of resources, the volume of product being put out is really not just high in volume. The quality is incredible. So figure out if there's ways of aligning there. And that applies not just to women. All of these organizations rely on allies and champions and sponsorship dollars and all of these other things to really advance what they're working on. And so there are opportunities regardless of what segment of the industry you're in, regardless of how much experience you have. If you're an earlier careerist and you're looking for a great support system, a lot of these will have that. If you're further in your career and you're looking to give back, there's a lot of opportunities to do that. So really just explore who's out there, what they're doing. If you have an organization that we're not familiar with or that hasn't reached out and been in contact with us, and you think that you're in hospitality and your mission is to elevate women, then by all means reach out to me. and let's see if you're a fit for the alliance. We've had some fewer organizations because there's been some consolidation of a couple of the existing ones, but there's no limit on what we can do. We are not a membership association. There's no buy-in, there's no sponsorship dollars, there's no barriers to entry. We are just a group of 30 organizations that are all committed to the same end goal, working together. I guess the two asks would be find if there's a niche that works for you with each of the organizations and then see if you're a fit for what the alliance is doing.