Women’s History Month is one of our favorite times of year. It offers a moment to pause and recognize the meaningful contributions women make across industries and communities, including the impact they bring to GCommerce every day.

This year, we spoke with members of our female leadership team about their career journeys. They shared the moments that shaped their paths, the challenges they navigated, and the milestones that helped define where they are today.
In the conversations ahead, you’ll learn how each leader arrived in their current role and the advice they offer to others building their own careers. Their stories are a reminder that there is no single path to leadership. Every journey is different, and each one holds the power to inspire.

To celebrate Women’s History Month, we invite you to hear directly from the women helping lead GCommerce forward. Each leader of the GCommerce team will be answering the following questions:

What is one core belief you hold about using data to guide marketing or commercial strategy within a property or portfolio?

I think something very important when it comes to analyzing data for marketing decisions is to look at it with a grain of salt and use your campaign context to help guide those strategies. Oftentimes, we see people get stuck on one or two metrics within a report that might look good or bad at face value. However, without the additional knowledge of campaign details or critical on-property performance, it can be hard to paint the full picture and understand whether or not a campaign is actually successful. In fact, it’s also important to review multiple reports as they all tell a different story, and when you combine all of this together, that’s when you can really craft a solid marketing strategy based on data.

Can you walk us through a practical example of how data has informed a decision you’ve made around property visibility, guest targeting, or channel performance?

A recent example that comes to mind is a big shift we made within our Meta campaigns and how we structure retargeting efforts. Because our retargeting lists tend to be smaller, we work to expand them as much as possible by including website visitors, email lists, and users who interact with the social media pages. Last year, one of our team members started digging into Meta’s campaign breakdowns and realized the data was showing high engagement with our social media engagers, but no bookings.

This led us to do a series of testing where we realized the social media engagers were still further down the funnel than our brand awareness users, but not quite ready to make a booking. We shifted our targeting for these users specifically to “prime” them for booking with messaging that correlated with their presence on Instagram or Facebook. Before long we noticed increased purchases with this audience and overall higher ROAS, proving that sometimes the simplest of changes can have a major impact.

Looking at that experience, what is the biggest takeaway for hoteliers who want to take a more performance-driven approach to hospitality marketing?

The biggest takeaway is to always have an open mind, which can be a hard thing for a hotelier who is set on very specific terms like brand presence, tone, or messaging. However, if you truly want to lead with the data, you need to let go of your pre-existing notions of how things should be or what you personally like and follow what the data is telling you. Unfortunately, what we like or prefer doesn’t always perform best, but if you want results, it means listening with your head and not your heart.

How does that takeaway connect to the way GCommerce approaches data, performance, and accountability in hospitality marketing today?

The way that I personally approach data at GCommerce is to first examine all my resources. There are a lot of different reports and angles when it comes to data analysis, and I find it’s the most helpful to first look at everything. From there, I break it down into smaller, digestible chunks and really let that data lead me forward in terms of which direction to take my analysis and resulting strategy. I regularly like to teach this approach because it allows the analyzer to take an open-minded approach to their campaign reviews and understand that we need to “follow the data.” 

Is there a woman who has mentored you along the way that you would like to recognize? How has her guidance shaped your career, and how do you aim to pay that mentorship forward to others?

I’ve had several female mentors over my career, and have been very lucky to be led almost exclusively by women as I’ve grown through various companies and roles. My first female mentor and manager, Amy, paved the way for me to enter the marketing field first through a college internship and then through two companies over the course of several years before finally bringing me into GCommerce. She really showed me what women championing other women looked like, and always gave me a seat at the table. As a manager now myself, I see a lot of those traits reflected in my own mentorships.

My next mentor was our now President, Lindley, who I directly reported to when I started at GCommerce. Lindley showed me the course that one can take to achieve greatness within the leadership team, but always had time to focus on her team members at the individual level to help them achieve their goals.

Lastly, and definitely not least, is my current mentor and boss Lisa. I’ve worked under her for nearly seven years now and have learned so much from her calm and even-tempered approach to work and management. Lisa always provided me with support and guidance, but primarily let me take the reins in my own career to carve out my own path and grow toward the direction that best suited me. She does such a great job meeting each member of her team where they are at and understanding how each needs an individualistic approach to management. Lisa set the stage for me to grow as a manager and now in the director role, and really showed me what success looks like at the leadership level.