Flight into the Unexpected

There are transitions in a career when the ground feels steady, and transitions when it simply disappears. Transitions in Flight was born from many stories , including this - one of those free‑fall moments early in my hospitality life—a moment when the story I’d planned collapsed overnight. This piece, and this story, are about what it really takes to lead yourself through that kind of change.

Why this matters

Every leader eventually faces a moment when the plan disappears and the ground drops out. What you do in that free‑fall—not your title or your resume—is what quietly shapes your leadership for decades to come. This story is about learning to move with change, not against it, and trusting your own compass when there’s no playbook, no mentor, and no guaranteed outcome.

Move with change, not against it

Transitions in Flight is my reminder to move with change, not against it. To honor the ways we rise, lose our footing, and then find new currents to carry us forward. That in‑between place is rarely graceful. In that moment, you are no longer who you were, and most definitely not yet who you are becoming.

My own “flight” began in 1981, when I joined Western International Hotels after graduating from the Hotel, Restaurant and Institutional Management program in the Business College at Michigan State. I was a restaurant‑focused student and had probably stayed in a hotel three or four times in my life. I knew very little about hotels.

What I did know was that my boyfriend of three years had been recruited the year before by a Western International Hotel in Atlanta. I interviewed with the General Manager of that hotel at a Michigan State recruiting event with one clear hope: join my boyfriend in Atlanta and start our life together. Somehow, I was miraculously hired.

The week I started work, my boyfriend informed me he planned to submit his two‑week resignation the next day, and return to a family business in Michigan. Just like that, everything shifted. My vision of the future—of “us” in Atlanta, building a shared story—fell away in a single conversation.

That night I sat alone in a hotel room 50 stories above a strange city, unsuccessfully trying to figure out how to dial long distance to call my mother. I was truly naïve, suspended between where I’d been and where I was heading. The night was long and filled with raw, honest self‑reflection.

By morning, something in me rose like the bright Atlanta sunrise. A small, steady spark of determination and clarity cut through the fear: I may not have known a damn thing about hotels (including how to use a guestroom telephone), but I sure as hell knew who I was. I was going to make this huge transition work. That moment of immediate clarity was brought to me by self‑determination. It was my first big lesson in learning to move with the current instead of fighting it.

ambiguity at scale

In leadership language, that was my first real encounter with ambiguity at scale. No mentor, no playbook, no guaranteed outcome—just a choice: cling to the plan that no longer existed, or step into a role I didn’t yet feel ready for. I chose the role. That decision, more than any title I would later hold, is what began to shape me as a leader.

I would spend the next nine years working at that hotel, from the subterranean garage to the sky‑high revolving restaurant. I would build life‑long friendships, create moments of pride, and a few of shame (after all, what are your twenties all about?). I would experience so many transitions and periods of growth—from a 22‑year‑old management trainee to a 31‑year‑old leader ready to escape the boundaries of implied expectations.

Critical Lessons

Here is what those “transitions in flight” taught me as a professional:

• Stability is often a story we tell ourselves. The real skill is learning to operate when the story changes overnight.

• Titles don’t define your trajectory. Your response to disruption does.

• Self‑reflection is not a luxury; it’s a leadership tool. Those long, lonely nights of honesty become the quiet engine behind brave decisions.

believe in yourself above all others.

That frightened, naïve young woman, who couldn’t correctly connect a long‑distance call, would go the very long distance over the next eighteen years. She would survive layoffs, mergers and upheaval, to become one of the last 12 employees in the Westin corporate office after the company was bought by Starwood.

Looking back now, I see a pattern that every leader eventually faces: the ground will disappear beneath you more than once. Strategy shifts. Organizations merge. People leave. What carries you is not certainty—it’s your capacity to reorient in mid‑air, to trust your own internal compass when external structures fall away.

Transitions in Flight, the artwork, coils this beginning of my journey into fiber: the dizzying height, the unexpected crosswinds, the quiet nights of doubt, and that stubborn, rising fiber of self‑trust that keeps you moving forward even when the ground disappears beneath you.

An Invitation to Share

If there is a single invitation I’d offer other leaders from this story, it’s this: don’t waste your transitions trying to get back to what was. Use them to practice who you are becoming. That is where the real art—and the real leadership—lives.

I invite you to think about your own “flight”—the moment when the old story ended before the new one was clear. What happened when your ground shifted? Are you ready for the next shift?