Two friends in the hospitality industry working in two different disciplines are more similar than their roles would suggest.
Both Remington Hospitality's Eve Moore and CHMWarnick's Kristie Dickinson are focused on creating value at their companies and building their peers up.
Moore, divisional vice president of operations at Remington, and Dickinson, managing director and executive vice president of CHMWarnick, became friends about a decade ago.
They met through Castell Project, which is now part of the American Hotel & Lodging Association (AHLA) Foundation.
Castell Project was founded in 2017 by Peggy Berg with the goal of elevating more women at all levels of hospitality industry leadership and ownership.
"When Castell was originally founded by Peggy Berg, Eve was on the board and I had gone through the program and first met Eve there, then was later active on the advisory counsel for Castell@College and spent a whole lot of time around that movement," Dickinson said during a podcast with Hotel News Now. "Through that, Eve and I had the opportunity to get to know one another and then from there would always would be very excited to find each other at industry conferences."
Not only have Moore and Dickinson connected because they're in similar stages of their careers, they've also bonded over being parents with children heading off to college.
Dickinson said having this friendship with Moore ties back to the value of having a network of people who can relate to you and know when to offer support.
"I have male and female friends and they all have great value to me personally and in this industry, but having female friends ... I think it's someone that can understand where you're coming from and knowing when to push you, knowing when to encourage you," Dickinson said. "They may sense those insecurities at times and really be that person to lift you up, someone who can help validate on a very real level."
"There's no better feeling than when you're making a connection and you're able to do deals with women that you've met in this industry," she added.
Ultimately, people do business with people they trust, Moore said.
"Kristie and I had a nice hangout on her sofa Saturday night in Boston a few weekends ago ... we're creating these relationships, or creating at least a foundation for these relationships, so that women can get into these [leadership] roles and advance business. That's the way that you stick. You stick because you know someone who's a subject matter expert or you know someone who knows someone who you can contact and will answer your call," Moore said.
Though Moore is in third-party management operations and Dickinson's field is in asset management and ownership, they agreed their overarching goals are alike and their roles bounce off each other.
Moore said their responsibilities are to increase the value of a hotel and add value to the owner. Their paths to getting those results, however, aren't the same.
"We have very similar roles but we have different perspectives. My perspective is rooted more so on the ownership and investment side but with the recognition that so much of the value and the potential for my clients is to realize their returns. It's really tied to their effectiveness of the team on the ground; that's all operations," Dickinson said. "For me to be successful in my role, I have to have a very close rapport, have empathy for this team [and] be in a position to put myself in their shoes."
For more insight from Kristie Dickinson and Eve Moore, listen to the podcast below.