Hospitality and tourism management senior Emma Marx was born and raised in California, yet her summer break this year was not spent enjoying the beaches, mountains or deserts that make up the state. No, she decided to go to St. Louis, Missouri.
“Who spends their summer in St. Louis when they live in San Diego?” hospitality and tourism management program director Carl Winston said. “Emma’s somebody who expressed a willingness to work anywhere (and) try anything. So we were able to connect her to Four Seasons at the NSHM (National Society of Minorities in Hospitality) conference and boom, she’s crazy enough to move to St. Louis. I mean, I just love that she did that.”
NSMH, an association that is represented by a student chapter at San Diego State, held a conference in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania last February where Marx got to meet some recruiters from Four Seasons Hotel. The company only takes on interns at three of their locations across the country. Four interviews later, Marx was offered an internship with the hotel and became one of 12 interns at the St. Louis location.
Marx feels lucky to have been given the opportunity. Though she has already worked at country clubs and restaurants for five years gaining experience, she sees working at a big hotel like Four Seasons as a new challenge.
“(Hotels are) a pretty large beast, which is what everyone was telling me before I went, but I still like it,” Marx said. “I walk around with a little notebook during my internship and take down notes about things that I’ve learned and things to remember and how they do things so that hopefully I can retain it all.”
As a food and beverage intern, her position consisted of completing a project with a group of interns. She worked almost 60 hours during the busy week of the Fourth of July. She also experienced three separate rotations in different areas of the hotel, and her day-to-day duties were dependent on her assigned rotation. Her favorite was the banquet rotation because it aligns with one of her goals to become a hotel banquet-operations director.
“I just want to be able to really be in charge of banquets and setting everything up and seeing everything through,” Marx said. “It’s kind of like a big puzzle. This piece needs to be ready then, and then that one. And how are you going to make sure it’s all done on time and ready for the guests? I just love it, creating special moments for people.”
Marx will continue to pursue her career goals this semester through her involvement with multiple organizations on and off campus, including the California Restaurant Association, NSMH and Foodies, the last of which she is president. She talked about how she initially joined Foodies almost two years ago as meetings and events coordinator and how much she enjoys being a member.
“I just fell in love with Foodies,” she said. “One of our things we do is a Restaurant a Month, where we showcase a different restaurant throughout San Diego every month and have a (family-style) meal and the front-of-house manager will come out and speak to us and give us some advice.”
While Marx considers herself to be a leader-in-progress, both Winston and Jeff Campbell, hospitality and tourism management master’s program director, already see her as a leader. Campbell described her as a sharp, professional and engaged standout from the other students in his Service Leadership Development undergraduate course last semester.
“We have student team activities where there’s no designated leader and we wait to see if anybody emerges,” Campbell said. “In both of those, she immediately popped out as a leader of the group and everybody looked to her as the leader.”
Winston described her as “silent but deadly.”
“She doesn’t come into a room and say, ‘Hey everybody, I’m here, look at me,’ like some charismatic leaders do,” he said. “She’s more like, ‘Hey everybody, what are we going to get done?’ And then she just gets stuff done. She’s the kind of boss you’d love to have and I predict a lot of career success for her.”
