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ALUM Spotlight Katy Law '01

This young alum may only be 24 years old, but after graduating in 2001 she packed her bags for an internship at the U.N. in the Big Apple and hasn't slowed down yet. When the internship dissolved after 9/11 she found a position working in the NY office of Prince Ranier's private Monte Carlo-based company. Today, however, you may find her at an international airport terminal as she jets around the globe representing Design Hotels performing hotel site inspections or meeting with clients.

Q. How would you describe your current job?

A. Sometimes I think my job is to be able to describe the way the wind blows through Hyde Park in autumn, or the way the stones on the beach on the coast of Turkey burn your feet, or the way the waves hit the rocks in Curacao and make all the air salty and misty at once and feel like bass drums in your ears. But of course, my weeks are from time to time a bit unreal. Next month I'll go from Miami to Mexico City to Sao Paulo to Buenos Aires and turnaround the day I get back to fly to Berlin for a week. So my classroom and my office becomes all these cities (and unfortunately, sometimes a lot of airport waiting as well). But really there are some nuts and bolts to what is usually less interesting to explain to people. So here are the basics…

Design Hotels is headquartered in Berlin and has nine offices around the world. Each office is basically split into Sales and Marketing & Acquisitions (finding new hotels who can use our resources). All of our hotels are independently owned and operated - which is really important for us in the scope of things - that we aren't a franchise or chain brand. We are what is called a “lifestyle brand.”

Basically, my job is to help elevate my hotels to the level of exposure that they would normally have access to if they belonged to a chain or franchise, such as Four Seasons or Ritz-Carlton, etc. I do that for them so that they can maintain the unique feel and style that an independent hotel has while not suffering on the business side of things. So I look after North and South America for all business (i.e. travelers) outgoing and domestic. So basically anyone from either continent that goes to one of my hotels is part of my regional scope and I direct them to the various channels (website, phone number, GDS system- travel agents use this, etc).

There is a lot of digging and general research, but my responsibility is to know how to best effect those travelers and ensure that they want to stay in one of my hotels as opposed to the competitive set. I love this position because it has invested me in everything that is going on in the world all the time - because I have such a global company - everything that I see in the news, on television, on the runways, in the movies, in magazines- ALL of it can be informative and telling for trends, effects, forecasting, and sometimes just what emails to expect to read about in the morning. I need to know about fashion weeks and furniture fairs in Milano, New York, Paris, and LA. There's sort of this global schedule of big things to know about to anticipate the ebb and flow of business from the states. Grand Prix, Ascot, Wimbledon, UN summits, weather in both hemispheres, currency fluctuations, political climates everywhere, flight patterns everywhere, the cost of jet fuel, the costs of labor everywhere, the culture of labor everywhere, greetings in a myriad of languages, what offends other cultures, what pleases other cultures, religious issues, and so on.

Traveling, what I essentially sell, becomes the lifestyle of the people who work in this company. It's more than just walls and beds that we look after. It's more than just a hotel - no matter where it is. Each owner is so different, they come from all walks of life, usually have pretty diverse backgrounds, and very diversified interests, and oftentimes we're involved with a project before they've broken ground, so we know the evolution of their ideas. We have one hotelier who loves Egyptian art, it's his passion. So he built his hotel around the art - every corner niche in a stairway or bedroom is for just that particular piece of art or sculpture. I have one hotel, in Venice, that is family owned and they spent years traveling around southern Italy collecting antique beds and armoires and furniture from the twenties and thirties, so every bedroom is different. I have another hotel in northern Kruger park in South Africa that has only interior walls, everything else is open, so you can take a bath and lay back in the bathtub and watch the giraffes and such just run by while you have a glass of wine. There's nothing between you and the sand and the little river that runs through the land. They have a deal with the tribe that is from their land, this is post-apartheid, that in twenty or so years the tribe will have the land ceded back to them. The tribespeople work and learn in the hotel, but they also eat dinner with the guests at one long table, so they're teaching a new trade for a whole people to sustain themselves long-term while also learning about the people who come to visit their home from around the world. It's an exchange of culture - it's just beautiful to me. I mean, how is that simply a vacation? That is something that will stay with you. We all have things to give and receive to people around the world.

Q. Did Auburn prepare you well for your career?

A. Auburn was perfect. I jumped right into the hotel industry with all the vocabulary and tools to learn fast and hands-on and show people that I was worthy of giving more responsibility. In sales one must first convince people one's own integrity and authority before you even get to whatever it is you're selling. I moved here when I was just twenty years old, so I knew how I looked to people - probably a bit of the deer-in-the-headlights with a bit of a southern accent (yes- Auburn influenced that too). But I can't tell you how much I draw back on my major. HRMT (Hotel and Restuarant Management) was just useful in life terms, in being able to relate to the international situations I was plunged into so quickly. It was great to have that kind of knowledge.

I'm even thinking of doing our remote masters program and perhaps someday coming back for a semester or two to complete the doctorate program. I try to correspond with all the professors in my major as much as possible. I consider them to be some of the smartest women in the world. They were so good to me to help me come up here for my internship at the U.N. and help me find the right mentors and such. I remember when I was thanking them before I left that all they asked was that I pass it on someday when it's within my abilities. So yes - absolutely absolutely - I wouldn't have gone anywhere bigger, or ivy league, or more specialized. For my industry especially (football biases aside), I think Auburn should be at the absolute top of where students wish to go for a head start.

Q. What is it like living in NYC?

A. It's sad to hear 9/11 become a kind of overused cliche when it was so real and vivid for us. It took me a long time to get over and in a lot of ways, we're all still dealing with it. I saw the first and last plane hit the towers, and the subsequent horrors that happened before and after they fell. It affected me deeply. So in March after it happened, while they were still taking things out of Ground Zero, a girlfriend and fellow AU/HRMT Phi Mu of mine and another Auburn alum moved to a block south of the WTC site. And we live there still. It's been amazing to see downtown be rebuilt. It's very much still in progress, but it's hope coming out of horror. And that's a kind of triumph that's a privilege to see. I go to church where they used the pews as beds for the injured and where Alexander Hamilton is buried just outside the doors. I never thought it would be, but it's become home to me, much like the
town in Florida that I grew up in.

My offices have just moved from Wall Street to Midtown and I can see the Empire State Building from my window. On my way to work this morning there was an Indian man sitting next to me, and two Italian women chatting away across from me, and the bus driver was a Russian immigrant. Everyone is represented here which in its own way is a kind of miracle that everything usually gets along swimmingly. Perhaps it's because I travel so much that I'm used to looking at our country from the outside in, as well as the contrary. But I wish more Americans could experience what we do, instead of just seeing the Empire State Building and Times Square. I run up Battery Park every morning (that is before we get too much snow) and I start my jogs just across from the Statue of Liberty. And every morning it still gives me goosebumps to think of my family members who came across from Europe and saw the same thing. It's startling to see history happening so vividly in front of your face, but also a privilege and responsibility.

Being a Southerner here is in many ways like being from another country (we feel an acute need to represent it well). My mother still sends me Cafe du Monde and grits and our home newspaper from time to time. We're all from down south in my apartment so we still make okra and tomatoes and sweet tea. For Thanksgiving I had an "urban family" dinner with all Southern food. And yes, we still listen to Van Morrison and when we really get homesick, we all get together and watch football (which has been expressly fabulous this year!).

Q. Any advice for students who are about to graduate and enter the workforce?

A. Find mentors!! Sometimes it will be worth it to take a bit lower salary when you're entry level to work for someone who will “grow” you well. Bite that bullet and eat pizza every night if you have to if you'll be working for someone who cares about your future. That is worth more than money (though you won't always remember that). The only reasons I had opportunities to learn things outside my job description were that I was working for people who wanted me to outgrow my place with them and move on to better things.

In interviewing for jobs never forget that you're also interviewing them as well. Confidence is palpable and people will respond to that well, they can also smell desperation a mile away. It's easy to forget that when you're desperate for a call back, always take a day to make a decision. Also, ask lots of questions. There's an old psychology test I always think about regarding first impressions. It says that the people who asked more questions of an interviewer were perceived as being much smarter and more likeable than those who just waited for the next question to come. Also, do a few informational interviews before you graduate. Find people who are in the industry you want to be in and who are doing what you eventually want to do and ask them for twenty minutes of their time to tell you about themselves and their particular paths. Ask them to interview you as though they were hiring you (this is where its ok to mess up and feel stupid). Give yourself space to at least learn what you don't know - that's priceless. Oftentimes you can then use these people for personal references if you have ongoing correspondence. Instead of the manager of your part-time college job, find people who are complete fans of your potential. When you don't have a long line of previous colleagues or directors to put on a resume, this is a great start and will speak volumes to people who may hire you. It shows self-starting.

And the last bit of advice I feel able to give (as I'm still only 24 so clearly I'm still learning!!) is to not be afraid to admit when you don't understand something and ask ask ask for help!! Establish a premise of capability in your job of course, but no one should expect you to know everything about a position as every single office is different. Work like you're being paid a lot more than you are. It may not always be about who goes home last - it's about who really internalizes or owns a project - make it personal. Those are the people executives love to have working for them. They want to know that you care about something being successful or not - not just because you might get in trouble if it doesn't go well, but because its yours. Honesty and integrity will always get you further in the long run than connections or degrees or talking your way around anything. But then, I suppose that goes for life as well. (That's my long Yankee way of saying I believe in “shooting straight from the hip”- but up here they wouldn't get what that means.)