From a high school kid at the front desk
to a 5-star insider.
Twenty years. Multiple cities. Hundreds of events. Here's the journey that built The Venue Insider.
I was seventeen years old, still finishing high school, and walking into my very first hotel shift at the Four Points by Sheraton. I didn't have all the answers, but I was a fast learner, and I was hungry.
By eighteen, I was a supervisor. That might sound impressive, but I'll be honest, it was hard. I was managing staff who had years on me and weren't exactly thrilled about taking direction from someone my age. But I did what I've always done: I listened. I found solutions. I treated every single person with respect. And slowly, I earned theirs.
But I knew I was capable of more. And I had my eye on something bigger.
"I've always believed that leadership isn't about your title, it's about showing up for your team every single day. That's what I learned at seventeen, and it's still how I operate now."
Growing up in South Beach, I used to pass the Loews Miami Beach Hotel as a teenager and think to myself: one day, I am going to work there. I said it out loud in the car. I remember that moment clearly.
After two years at Four Points, knowing that a small property had a ceiling I'd already hit, I applied. I got the job. And what followed was eight years that shaped everything.
I started at the front desk and worked my way into rooms management, controlling inventory and overseeing renovations. Then the opportunity came to move into Convention Services, and when the department tried to block my transfer, my leadership team froze the position just for me. That's the kind of impression I had made.
I still laugh thinking about those first few weeks. I didn't know the difference between a six-foot table and a classroom setup. But within months, I was the person meeting planners called first, and I was loving every minute of it.
"The moment I stepped into Convention Services, I knew. This was it. This is exactly where I was supposed to be."
I knew I wanted to go further in meeting planning, but I also knew I needed the credentials to back it up. So I made the decision to step back, take a role with more scheduling flexibility, and go back to school. That decision changed my life.
At Florida International University, I walked into my first event planning class and met Professor Dr. Dan Cormany, the head of the event planning department and a former Loews executive himself. A friendship and mentorship began that day that I will carry with me forever.
The night I graduated, he called me at eleven o'clock and said: "There's an opportunity. Are you flexible with travel?"
Dr. Cormany has since passed away, but his belief in me changed the course of my career. Not a week goes by that I don't think about the lessons he taught me or the opportunities he helped create.
Within a month of graduating, I was hired as a Meeting Coordinator at A+ Meetings & Incentives through Dr. Cormany's introduction. What was supposed to be three to five programs a year quickly became three to five programs a month. I was traveling constantly: the US, the Caribbean, South America, Mexico. My rolling carry-on became my best friend.
I became so indispensable to the company that they ultimately hired additional coordinators because of the workload my success had created. But when my family was growing and the travel needed to slow down, I made the difficult decision to return to hotels.
"Kill everyone with kindness. You never know who you'll run into again, or what impression you left behind."
An opportunity to join the Mondrian Hotel as Catering and Convention Services Manager came at exactly the right time. I then went on to work at 1 Hotel South Beach, one of the most breathtaking properties I have ever been a part of. Destination weddings. Corporate events with budgets reaching well into the six figures. Programs that required managing over a hundred BEOs. It was demanding, precise work, and I thrived in it.
This is also where I first encountered what would become the foundation of The Venue Insider: I kept inheriting contracts written by others that were confusing, misleading, or just plain unfair to clients. Every new property I walked into, I was protecting a couple from terms they never fully understood. This happened over and over again.
After taking time to focus on my family, I returned to full-time hotel life at the iconic Fontainebleau Miami Beach as a Convention Services Manager, managing high-profile conferences and complex programs at one of the country's premier luxury resorts.
Today, I continue to work in the meetings and events industry as a Project Manager with PROfound Planning, supporting corporate meetings and incentive programs throughout the US and the Caribbean. I also partner with fellow planners as an independent event professional, providing on-site event support and selectively taking on day-of wedding coordination.
Every role has given me a new perspective, from the hotel side to the planner side, and those experiences became the foundation for The Venue Insider.
"Every contract I touched, every negotiation I sat in on, every couple I helped, it all led here."
