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Welcome everyone to The Design Board, a podcast by UpSpring that dives into the world of design, development and everything in between. I'm your host, Caroline Schillaci, and today I'm joined by Chris Tucker, CEO of NEWH. Together we'll explore the forces shaping trends in the hospitality industry and how women are at the forefront of driving these changes in the years to come.
For a bit of background on our guest today, with over 30 years of experience in the hotel design industry, Chris Tucker is the founder of Tucker and Associates, where she worked closely with purchasers, property owners, designers, and architects to bring visionary projects to life. A true champion of NEWH, Chris joined the organization in 2005 and has since held more than 40 different board positions, including her most recent tenure as president and past president of NEWH. Currently, she serves as the CEO of NEWH, which supports the hospitality industry through scholarships, educational programs, mentorship and networking opportunities. Thanks so much for being here with me today, Chris.
Hey Caroline, thanks for having me. I appreciate and share the time.
Amazing. I'd love to start with a little background for our listeners. How did your journey begin at NEWH and what drew you to become actively involved?
The journey began 20 years ago. That means I've grown old. So what's happened, I was a sales rep for a company and took a look at this opportunity to go to a networking event at the NEWH Toronto Chapter. So I went to this event and had no expectations really, just networking, seeing how it was going, and met a lot of people, designers, other salespeople in the industry, and it was a very social, non-aggressive sales style event. So we socialized, had a good time, and while I was there, one of the board of directors on the chapter board did a little explanation to me of what NEWH stood for, which is Network Executive Women in Hospitality, and it started in 1984 and was about empowering women and making the workplace and life more of an equal opportunity for women. At that point, I didn't need to hear anymore. I'm in, I bought in, that was it.
So 20 years ago I attended a few more events and after a few events, Priscilla Nesbitt, who was big cheese at Best Western in Canada, invited me to get more involved on the board, said "Easy peasy, whatever." And I'm like, "Okay, sure. I'm in." And I'm looking back and it's 20 years later and I've gone through so many ranks of the association it is mind-boggling to me that it's taken 20 years, but at this point I'm now an employee of the association. So that is a huge trail of wins all the way through from signing up for something that was, I'm just going to volunteer. One little baby step turned into 20 years later to a CEO role for NEWH Corporation.
I love that.
Thank you.
Well, they say everything happens for a reason. So I think that journey is a testament to that saying. And you call out a few things about some of the benefits. It sounds like that networking, professional development, being around like-minded women, but what are some of the less obvious benefits of joining a professional organization, particularly for women professionals?
Less obvious. It's funny when you say that. What's obvious, I also find to me, and what's less obvious to some others are funny terms in that there's so much that some people think nothing of and there's so much that's such a huge priority of what you put as a priority in your life or how you behave. So when I engaged, first and foremost, it was for networking, to be very honest. That's why I went out and did it to help build my business and get connected. But in joining with other women, there's a camaraderie. Women I feel tend to give more to others. I'm not saying that men don't. There's a bond and women are just natural nurturers. So you're in this group, you're watching people, you're learning, you're observing. That's one of the biggest things. When you go somewhere, listen, watch, look at what's happening around you, that learning curve or development of yourself is not something you typically learn at school. You don't learn it in high school, you don't learn it in college or university. You learn it in a social environment.
And when I went to these things, I started connecting with people, but I'm watching the leaders. I'm being mentored. At this point in my life, I'm a mentor of these people and you're giving back. You're connecting and it's next level. These are people that you wouldn't normally meet day to day. You don't meet them at Starbucks, but if in sales, you try and make a call and you have to break through that barrier to get to people. But the environment was a casual social environment, so you're establishing a relationship. And one of my bosses when I just started my career said, "Make your clients your friends." And I thought, well, that's kind of odd, but I did. And in turn, it becomes your community and it's so much more important because if you're enjoying what you do every day, it's fantastic.
So by becoming social with your community and your network, you build on that. And I think a lot of people don't realize that. They think this is my job, these are my worlds. I have this world, I have that world. But what I find is through NEWH, so many of these people over my 20-year time span with them have become social friends. People I can pick up the phone, I can ask who's who? What's what? How are your kids? How's your husband? Did you get a new dog? These are things that are just so vital in how you do business and how you operate and how you grow because you learn from these people. So when you say, what's that less obvious, and it's like some people think, oh, I go to networking to get a business card and leave and how am I going to get an appointment with that person?
These are things that I learned and some of the other key things that obviously are in my evolution of my career were leadership skills. The association offers opportunities and training and managing on how to be a leader, how to manage groups, public speaking in events, small events or groups or leading a group. These are not things I learned in college. So those are obvious and less obvious depending on who you ask. I would say about any association, not just NEWH, but NEWH has been my gold key for everything that I've done and many other people, but any association you get out of it what you put into it.
Yeah, I think that's great. I also feel, and maybe you have some additional thoughts here as well, but just since the pandemic with people still being hybrid or even people coming out of college, not having as much in-person experience really funnels that need for that connection, that personal development alongside others. So I think like you're saying, getting that experience with leadership, creating personal connections with individuals that you might not necessarily meet is so important.
I absolutely agree. The great thing, the best thing in my opinion that came out of covid was Zoom and the opportunity to be in touch with people, have that communication via Zoom, changed meetings, changed travel schedules, changed priority scales on this business and personal completely for everyone to the point of you learn something. My mother at 85 is doing Zoom and the kids are doing Zoom. So it's rarely that you get some technology that everybody adapted to within one year and move forward and well, everybody does it to a different level, myself included. So I'll give you that.
But honestly, I don't think there's anything that compares to face-to-face interaction with people, that we will always have the need for that because the relationship is different When you're face-to-face. You can chat with somebody over Zoom or on a phone call, and one of the biggest things about emails or texts is the innuendo. What you think you understand and what somebody's saying is not there. So that's what the face-to-face, which you can get a bit with Zoom, but live is better.
What I find too about membership is if you're part of the association, you're part of managing it, you're immediately taking a leadership role that maybe you don't feel that you are, but you are considered a leader in the community, being a leader in the community and recognized as that because you just volunteered, it's not that you got promoted to that role or whatever. You just gave of yourself, and that also gives a respect for other people and how they deal with you, that you're not what's in it for me? At every point of your career you are giving and by giving people come back to you. People remember that.
So I think part of any membership is step up, offer some time. You know what, everybody's got a different amount of time they can put towards anything like that. But the relationship interaction I think is a huge scenario that we see with the kids that have grown up that weren't going to school during covid and the interpersonal skills.
It's funny, one of the, say what's normal for other people, I get on an elevator, I'll say, "Hello, hello, hello." You don't have to look at your shoes. But so many people are like, "Oh my God, she's talking to me. Why are you talking to me?" Anyway, I just find that's one of those interpersonal skills, I'm drawn to greet somebody, say hello, and you walk the streets, you're walking a dog, "Hi, how you doing?" Whatever. You acknowledge people. That social skill is something that is learned and you can expand on it. And by going through any membership opportunity that's live, you become more social. And I think everybody needs that social in their life.
I think that's great advice, especially for people that have recently joined organizations or are looking to join one too.
Absolutely.
In what ways have you seen industry organizations uplift underrepresented groups and how has this impacted your experience?
The representation and bringing things full fold for everyone to have availability. My initial reaction with NEWH was we were empowering women. I have to say, we got so good at it, men wanted to join. So it's not exclusive to women. With NEWH, we will allow men in and they contribute very much to our association. But the forefront was it was established to give women a step forward and help out your fellow woman in this world, which is still something I always like to do, if I have the opportunity to do that. NEWH is a not-for-profit 501(c)(3) and we award scholarships. So that is our first and foremost drive is to raise funds for scholarships for those seeking a future in the hospitality industry. So with that, our scholarships are based on you need to be in the hospitality field or driven to that as your end goal once you complete your post-secondary education.
And the scholarship winners are based on financial need. So those who are challenged to get through school, they need the extra funds and we can help them finish the education to get to the career they want. So that's empowering so many people. Certainly we didn't shout it from the mountains, our equity and inclusion that we were doing until society had some challenges in it and it became very much aware that we needed to put some more exposure to that. So we've been doing that for years of people that, call them underrepresented or financially challenged and they're from all races and cultures. So that is something that NEWH does, and I think that's also part of being an association. You don't see color, you don't see race, you see a human, and that's what you need to give some help to.
That's amazing. On that note too, can you share any inspiring success stories of rising female professionals or men since I know they're part of the organization, and how did their involvement help shape their career paths?
This is an easy one for me. I have a good friend, Jaymie Mistry, and she is an interior designer. She was at the University of Manitoba, that's a hotspot in the world of Canada. She graduated in 2016, but in 2015 she found NEWH on a website. And because in Manitoba, we don't have a chapter there, we don't have any access to that, so she discovered NEWH through the web and applied for the Cliff Tuttle, NEWH Scholarship Award. And Cliff Tuttle was a very well-known designer in New York, Singapore. He traveled around the world and this is his scholarship award that we award every year at BDNY, which is a trade show in New York. So she applied in 2015, was the winning candidate, and basically you have to have a grade point average. She was in interior design, financial need, and she met all that criteria and she was the winning scholarship award.
And it was presented at BDNY by the current president of NEWH, which was Trisha Poole. Trisha Poole has a design firm in Orlando, Florida. Met her, they hit it off, and she said, when you graduate, reach back to me. So she did a year later, reached back to her and Trisha hired her and she then got a work visa to go work in Florida. So she moved from Manitoba to Florida, which is a pretty sweet weather change and has escalated through the, been there eight years and after six and a half, seven years with the company, moved back to Toronto and they opened a Canada office. So she's right now the vice president of design at Design Poole Canada, which is a huge thing.
So here's somebody who was in school, connected through NEWH, won an award, got some financial aid to finish her schooling, met this person, immediately went to work for the company, went to a different country to do it, and now has come back to another country and they've opened up an office and there's people working out of the Canada office for Design Poole, and Jaymie is on our Toronto chapter board, a director of scholarship. So she is giving back to the community that gave back to her. And she's a friend of mine and she has a ton of friends through NEWH because she's connected around the world through the association of NEWH.
Yeah, that's a great example. I think really speaks to what you were mentioning earlier about the power of giving and getting back through that giving and then also really just speaks volumes to how important networking is too, especially early on in your career.
Agreed, totally.
Like we were saying, networking is often seen as crucial. How can women best leverage these opportunities, and what's your advice for forming lasting, impactful relationships?
The relationships I feel grow from being connected. It's more of a natural thing. The more you force it doesn't happen. So if you're in a social environment, we touched on that earlier, but I like in a networking environment to understand people, get to know them, find out who's in your community. Don't necessarily go talk to somebody because what they can give to you. Just talk. Quite often I am talking to my competitors or I was, different world for me now, to my competitors, and there's enough business for everybody. If everybody went out into the world knowing they could do their share, everybody does their share, you work together and it's a positive community. You're also meeting like-minded people in the industry, and I think that's a key thing that you're surrounding yourself with other people that are working in your area. They might not be doing exactly what you're doing, but everybody's got a different approach and you can learn from that.
I think leadership and management skills are a huge attribute that comes from being part of an association, not just NEWH, but I think we do a good job of it. Personally, of course, it's done something amazing for me, but it offers education, training, interaction skills with other board members. You're putting on functions, opportunity to grow.
So one of the very important things for me with NEWH was the opportunity to move through the board of directors and with each time stepping up to a different role and then that offered travel. So in the position in Toronto, Canada, what's a limited market that's here, same population as Texas, so our community as a whole is a bit smaller than North America, but being part of the board, I was able to move up and travel. So we have international board meetings, and at that time they were three times a year, so I've got a stipend to be able to travel to these board meetings in January. That one moved around. And we have in May at HD Las Vegas, which is a big trade show in US. We have that. And that was an IBOD meeting in conjunction with that. And in November, we have our IBOD, International Board of Directors meeting is the acronym for that, we have our board of directors meeting at BDNY, which is Boutique Design, and each year that allowed me three different travel times.
Plus our executive committee had strategic planning, which we would go to Milliken's campus in South Carolina and were hosted there and we did strategic planning, educational goals, swats. There's just so much education put into this that you're not paying for. It just comes with being part of the association. So it just builds your interpersonal skills, and that is one of the biggest things I've taken away from NEWH. They've trained me. I've had 20 years where I've been trained and that's available to anybody that engages, that is in our industry, joins as a member and continues to get involved, these opportunities are there.
And the continued mentorship, that has been a huge thing for me over the years, and you sometimes take it for advantage, you just don't realize how much you're getting when you're working with other people. But that has been a very big asset. Just natural evolution of my career and my development and other people that are part of the association and watching them has been a very proud thing to grow with.
Yeah, I love that. And I want to dive into that a little bit more too. Are you able to share some of the programs that make a meaningful impact within NEWH? And additionally, what are some of the organization's key mentorship initiatives for fostering growth and building connections?
Well, I absolutely can share how much time do we have? So let me give you a brief overview of NEWH and just reiterate, our website is NEWH.org that you can go in and take a look at these, get more information, but I'm just kind of gliding over the top of this. But to start with, I mentioned earlier, NEWH is a 501(c)(3), a not-for-profit charitable organization, and we have several amazing initiatives which we continue to grow to the success of the initiative or the interaction and the engagement. So if something's really not flowing very well or getting a lot of activity, we look at how we can upgrade it, cut it, keep it, what you need to do with it. So we're constantly reviewing. This is something we do every year in our strategic planning, and that's something that the executive team does do. So that's part of the education factor that we do for our people.
Scholarships are our biggest and brightest accomplishment. Our scholarships are based on students pursuing careers in hospitality. So it could be interior design, architecture, landscape architecture, hospitality management, that whole facet of education and with the end goal that they want to get into hospitality world, which is a very large world. And they have to have financial need. So that's where it touches on we're helping those, if you have the money and you can go to school, fantastic, but it's those that don't. So we support the future of our industry and move that forward. And typically for those that get a scholarship, there's a connection to the association. They join, they're embraced, and they're mentored through the rest of their career. If they continue and stay on with us, which is our goal for every scholarship winner that we have.
To date, we have awarded more than $9.3 million in scholarships to over 3,100 students aspiring to careers and hospitality, and we grow that every year. That's our pride and joy is scholarships.
We also celebrate people and awards. So in our industry, there's so many leaders, there's so many people giving of themselves. So here's a few of the things we do.
We have the NEWH Icon, which is celebrating one person per year leader in our manufacturing side of the industry, so that's an award we do.
NEWH Pinnacle Award is a member who has given extraordinary time and effort to NEWH and chapter and at the international level of involvement in mentorship with unquestionable ethics. Ethics are a big thing for us. That is all part of, we want to be ethical in how we live and do business.
Top ID. This is an award that's done for interior design firms, celebrated at every one of our chapters annually, celebrates philanthropic involvement for the designers in our community, and it offers them a platform, promotion, marketing materials, and advertising in all of our chapters.
We also have the Joyce Johnson Award, which is the chapter excellence Award. So this is awarded at our chapter level, so recognition of excellence and exemplary contribution to the community and the benefit of the members in that chapter. We have College of Fellows, which is notable difference, so somebody who's been involved with NEWH over several years.
And previously we had NEWH Woman of the Year for women who lead our industry and have mentored and promoted advancement of women in our industry. That award has been more morphed into the Joyce Johnson Award now, but that was an award we had for several years.
We publish NEWH Magazine four times a year, highlighting our members, projects, industry news in a printed publication and online. We have BrandEd, which is partners with leading hotel brands such as Marriott, Hilton, IHG, Hyatt, Accor, Holland America, and they share insights in the pipeline from a senior management level with our chapters. So this is something we do five to six times a year, and we move it around to chapters. So you're actually getting interpersonal relationships with senior VPs of these brands and awareness to what they're developing.
We have equity, inclusion, diversity program, which offers exposure and education in all of these areas.
We have Green Voice Design Competition, as well as scholarship and information on our website. We have EDOnline, which is technical information.
And one of the newest initiatives, and we're very proud of it, is Martha's Mentors. Martha's Mentors is a new program. We have natural mentoring happening at every chapter just as people mentor in relationships, and it's not structured. This new program we started last year was the first year, it was initiated by Stacey Garcia out of respect and thanks to Martha Tillman, who was a mentor of hers when she started very young in her career, who took her to an NEWH event in Washington D.C. And they went into the room, and Stacey, hard to believe was a bit shy, but back in the day was her start of her career, and Martha took her by her side and made sure she worked the room, met people, socialized, and helped her through, and it set simple guidance of somebody who's been doing something for several years to take someone under their wing.
So this program kickstarted last year. We do specific training with our mentors. Our mentors are leading industry designers, salespeople, people that own their own company, whatever walk it is, but they're leaders in the industry and they've committed to mentor somebody that's up and coming. And this up and coming is five years new in their career. It's not necessarily students. It's somebody that's come out, they're working and maybe they've changed jobs. I have this most amazing mentor, her name Shelia Lohmiller. She started NEWH and she's been mentoring me for 20 years. We're not in an official program, but we're in a twenty-year program, so I thank her for that. But our mentorship program has been a huge success, to give back the really payback to the mentors. They've been so pleased at what it's done for them and how it's paying it forward. So we're very proud of that. Take a look at that on the website, plus all of those other initiatives I mentioned because we're very busy. There's a lot going on. There's a lot to offerings within NEWH.
Caroline Schillaci:
Yeah, that is incredible. I was just going to say the same thing. It sounds like you and the team have been quite busy with all of these different offerings. That's incredible. And it's helpful to you for anyone looking for more information, like Chris said, the website is a great resource to learn more about each of those initiatives. Speaking of its exciting things, this year marks the 40th anniversary of NEWH. How has the association evolved since its inception, and what are some of the key milestones and transformations over the past four decades?
Well, we've been celebrating all year. It's been a fantastic year, 40th anniversary. We kicked it off with a big celebration in Las Vegas at HD. We had over 250 people at that event celebrating and just raising a glass to every member that's made a difference with NEWH. The evolution, we started in 1994, 3 women got together in the industry. They were in LA and they had a lunch and decided we need to do something for women. We need to help each other out and we need to grow this. So we went from three women and we're now over 7,300 members. We have 30 chapters and regional groups, and we're in five countries, US, Canada, the UK, France, and Italy. We have raised $9.3 million in scholarships to date, and that grows every day. We have made a difference in our industry by staying connected through 40 years of changes, growth in programs, our offering. Staying relevant is a huge thing, embracing this upcoming generations because what I may think is right, what that 25-year-old thinks is right is very different. We approach things very different.
So we've been very diligent to try and ensure we remain relevant because if we just become outdated, there's no point in being part of this because the industry changes. It's constantly changes. Covid was something that nobody knew, and we really did a good job and we used that word pivot, sorry, had to use it, we pivoted during covid onto the Zoom world, but that was part of the embracing. People were out of work, and I actually kind of dove into it. I had no business going on. Sales rep, couldn't go out, and it was five days a week online with Zoom calls and presentations and staying connected. And it was empowering because people had friends, people had relationships, and the programming and our brains were working. We kept moving forward. We didn't sit in the corner and go, "Oh, the sky's falling, Chicken Little." So we stayed connected. So that's been a huge thing for us.
And at NEWH, we're a family. We're people that choose to be part of their lives and people stay friends for a lifetime. It's wonderful to be connected, and I think the connection is the reason for our success or any association's success.
Yeah, I love that. I absolutely agree. Well, it sounds like it's been an exciting year. And to wrap things up, I think either looking back at your own career and NEWH being an influence, but also looking forward, what are you most excited about and what last piece of advice would you give others seeking similar growth?
Well, that's a lot of questions. Having this chat, thinking about where it is, it's just to be grateful. I look back, I was a sales rep. Well, when I was in grade two, I wanted to be a school bus driver, so I've got a little further than my aspirations from grade two, that's for sure. But when I started 20 years ago, I was a sales rep employed by one company, doing my thing. I went to an NEHW event, got connected, met several people, looked at these opportunities. I changed from being an employee to a multi-line rep 14 years ago, expanded my options, met all of these connections through NEWH. This was my pipeline. It became my pipeline for that.
And then changes with that, I was a volunteer. I just showed up. Then I became a board member. Then I took several chapter positions. Then I became president of the chapter in Toronto. Then I became vice president of Canada, NEWH Canada, and I was on the international board of directors as a VP for several years. Moved up through the ranks of that to become the president of the International Association, and as of November 1st this year, now I'm the CEO. These were not things that I had in my line plan. This was not what I had... I was going to be a school bus driver. That big yellow bus was my deal. I'm in the driver's seat, just a very different bus.
So on that, I wouldn't have even considered that this was a path for me when I joined NEWH. I went to a networking event. I was having a cocktail. I was meeting people. I was doing what that was. But I've had an education, social networking skills, mentorship, camaraderie, business development. It's been amazing how it's helped me with my business over the years. Public speaking, confidence, friendship and relationships are what this has meant to me, and it's being part of something that's larger than myself and making a living at it is amazing. Sure, some days there are challenging, but every day is unique, and I love the people and I love what I'm doing thanks to NEWH.
Amazing. That's so inspiring, and this has been such a helpful for our listeners. I know, especially for younger designers or those in sales who are looking to gain more connections or learn about different industry organizations. So this has been so inspiring. Thank you so much, Chris, for being with me here today.
You know what, Caroline, thanks for letting me share my story and the NEWH story, and I welcome anybody to join us. Not everybody's going to get to the CEO role. It's taken. I'm in that seat. I'm driving that bus.
You're driving the bus.
I'm driving that bus. But there's so many opportunities, and it's such a minimal cost. It's investing. It's investing in yourself. Being part of our association or any association, I challenge people to invest in themselves.
I love that. Thank you so much.
Thank you.
Thank you so much for listening in with us today. We hope you leave inspired by the ideas in today's episode. For more, follow UpSpring on LinkedIn and Instagram. And don't forget to check out the amazing lineup of shows brought to you by the SURROUND Podcast Network at SurroundPodcast.com.
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