Responsible for all Cafe Operations, including interviewing, hiring, training, coaching, fluency in all food and beverage standards and menus, P&L responsibility, inventory and ordering management and utilization of corporate tools to discover gaps in knowledge and drive sales for a profitable and enjoyable retail environment.

Opening Team Member. I implemented and refined the standards and philosophies that would drive the Elysian to be one of the finest hotels and most desirable residential addresses in the world. The Private Residences at the Elysian are managed in house, therefore, extensive time and resources were devoted to building our Property Management Company from scratch. Being on the front lines allows a very quick gauge which policies made would succeed and which would fail and allowed me to be a constant source of feedback and new source of ideas and solutions for my Directors. This proficiency with standards and accumulation of knowledge placed me in line to become my department's trainer for all new Ambassadors, as well as continued source of answers for all my colleagues.The Ambassador position was created by the Founding Members of the Elysian, and came to represent the ultimate resource available to Guests and Residents. Ambassadors are the combined positions of Door and Bell Staff, Front Desk Agents, Amateur Concierges, Errand Runners and most every other role in between that insures that professionalism and service are delivered to their highest standards.

Opening Team Member. The dana hotel and spa is a built-from-scratch, locally owned and operated, 4-Star, Luxury Boutique Hotel located in the River North neighborhood of downtown Chicago. After deciding to settle down on land after my nomadic spell on the boats, I was fortunate enough to be welcomed into the family at the dana and the opportunity turned out to be priceless. I began as a Front Desk Agent and was eventually given a relief shift in the Reservations Department which soon grew into my full-time position. I loved learning the two sides of the coin-- the guests experience and perceptions before they had arrived, and their experience and impressions once they were in our door-- and doing all I could to make sure that both were seamlessly elegant. The nature of growing a new hotel allowed me to be cross-trained very quickly and to actually have a hand in the way that procedures developed. Through the occurrence of this scenario, I was able to take responsibility and ownership for several areas that I felt needed a little extra attention in order to make a real difference.

My job description with ASC incorporated everything on the Yacht especially if it had to do with her interior or "hotel". If there was a cocktail to be shaken, a toilet to be unplugged, a meal to be served, a line to be tossed, a guest to learn a life lesson from or a wooden rail to be sanded and varnished I was right there with the rest of the crew attending to it. We as a crew were a fiercely loyal bunch, and could fight like cats and dogs, but when we were on, it was divine. "Like a well oiled machine" was a popular analogy that the guests would make, and for as cliche as it was, they were dead right. The boats took me to the Inside Passage of Alaska for two summers, through the Pacific Northwest, up and down the Columbia River two times, down the Pacific Coast and all around the Sea of Cortez in Baja California Sur.

My career as a classical guitarist has allowed me to perform in Oklahoma, Texas, Missouri, Illinois, Washington, Alaska, Oregon, Indiana, Florida and Baja, Mexico. I recorded three albums and released two of them for limited sale and learned the all the detail of what makes a great performance great.

The most amazing restaurant I have ever worked at, by far. Such attention to detail and dedication to employees made the operation run like clockwork. The management was committed to training its staff, and it truly made the job much more rewarding. When there was a new menu, we all got to try it, and because each dish was so exceptional, it was easy to convey the experience to the guests and help make their visit amazing.

Opening Team Member. I served my sentence at this Major Coffee Institution and learned first hand what a great experience was, and learned what a genuine connection looked like. I craved much more of it and those lessons have continued to spice my travels since then and give me a standard by which many others live and die. This job took me (or I took it) to Seattle where all of the formerly muddled ideas that I possessed about customer service began to slosh around a little bit less and gradually become more lucid.