SWISS IM&H

We are very excited to welcome our first Guest Speaker to the Women's Leadership Program this Thursday, Ms. Emily Hagen. Emily Hagen graduated in 2012 from Virginia Tech with a B.S. in Sociology with a focus on Social Inequality. She began her post-graduate career working in a residential youth behavioral center in Memphis, Tennessee for two years before relocating to Charleston, South Carolina. Within a few months of relocating, Emily quickly found her way into the Charleston hospitality industry after working part-time at a hotel on the weekends, also harnessing her experience working summers at an IHG property in her college town. Over her seven years in the Charleston market, Emily has gained valuable experience with various branded hotels, such as IHG, Hilton, and Wyndham Worldwide. She currently works for Charlestowne Hotels, a prominent hotel management company with local headquarters, as the Hotel Manager of Shem Creek Inn, a 51-room boutique waterfront hotel, that also has a yacht available for guests to rent. Emily shared her really inspiring journey with us and answered all our questions! :) enjoy!

Welcome everyone to our SWISS IM&H Podcast hosted by Media Department and Career Centre Plus! This time we met our MBA student Fleming Gracious who shared some tips and his own experience on building a personal brand online while using two professional platforms: LinkedIn and Hosco.

What is about? We will discuss the Mindset growth in the Hospitality Industry and how it's vital to change it now and nurture for the future. - how important it is to have a growth mindset at students' stage of career and particularly for an industry such as hospitality. - how to handle setbacks and failures - how important it is to create a vision for your life first, then for your career, and how to use that vision to build resilience and get you through challenges that may come up along the way! Exciting! Isn’t it? # #SWISSIMHPodcast #HospitalityToday Our speakers: Samantha Touchais is an author and a Business and Mindset Coach helping people create and enjoy their dream businesses. She has over 20 years of marketing and strategy experience working for large international companies but it was her love of how the mind works and how to create the right mindset for success that led her into coaching. She works with clients on a 1:1 basis as well as offering online courses for self-led learning. You can find her at > Jennifer Fengels is the Head of the Career Centre at Swiss IM&H, a young, dynamic Hospitality School located in Weggis. Jennifer's role is to build and develop the Career Centre through collaborative partnerships within the hospitality industry, thus providing students with high quality internship opportunities and future careers in the industry. She is also responsible for facilitating programs on campus which support the students' personal and professional development.

It is not exactly breaking news that we cannot stop learning after graduating. With the pace of change and innovation of our times, it is impossible to stay up to date without continuously learning. And if you have a successful career in your mind, then you really need to step up the game, as the hospitality industry is no exception. The digitalization of our lives means constant improvement, automation, and innovation at every step. You need to be tech-savvy to understand how things work, and yet, you need to stay creative to avoid being replaced by a robot. In parallel to digitalization stands sustainability. What that means for hospitality is a radically new way of operating to maintain – or improve – reputation and satisfy the needs of customers. So, having figured out the importance of constant personal evolvement, the question is how to make it happen? Head’s up: there is no magic wand that will help you, so you are going to have to do some work here yourself. First, you need to clearly define a skill you are willing to master and make sure it is manageable. Don’t get us wrong, but it might not be exactly feasible to become a ballet dancer at the age of 35. However, you can learn, say, public speaking, at pretty much any time. Now, once you’ve got the skill ready, divide it into smaller goals. Fully mastering a skill takes time and can seem overwhelming, but by dividing it into smaller pieces, you will ease up the pressure, while making it easier to track the process. Just before you start learning, reflect on some past learning experiences. Can you recall some good and bad ones? There should appear a pattern that will help you determine your learning style – choose the one that works best for you and apply it to the upcoming process. Finally, don’t spend your whole time learning behind closed doors. Get the basic knowledge online, and then reach out to your peers. Someone from your network will surely have your chosen skill mastered, so why not ask for help? They will probably be able to give you some useful tips and honest feedback. If you have the opportunity, don’t hesitate to approach a few different people. They might point out different things, and you’ll end up more informed. So, remember: being smart is not enough. You need to get smarter all the time. And while it doesn’t sound easy, trust us on this: learning is a skill in itself, so it does get easier with time.