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Whether it was traveling in the United States calling on the
nation's top Fortune
500
corporate decision makers, or jetting through Europe
introducing luxury hotels to travel agents, Penny
Neff has always
held a high standard of excellence in
every task. Her "commitment to excellence"
moved up her the corporate ladder very rapidly and at a very
young age.
Ms.
Neff states that, "a commitment to excellence is not a
9
to 5 ordeal, it
is a lifestyle. When I arrive home and put down the
briefcase, I don't all of the sudden turn off the
"champion inside me".
Born
in Corpus Christi, Texas, Penny grew up as a tomboy
with horses and the outdoors. She excelled in school and was
known to "have brains" for a girl. Her
interests in school were music and agriculture. As a
member of the Future Farmers of America, she was one of the first
girls to study agriculture and made FFA history by being
the first girl to ever enter and win FFA talent
contests
on the local, regional, and state levels.
After
high school,
Penny was crowned Miss Corpus Christi - an official
preliminary to the Miss America competition. Once
again her singing talent and public speaking could not be
ignored. She began writing professionally at
18 and started her own publishing company. Soon, she
joined the ranks of being a professional studio singer,
and after learning the ropes, she began writing and
singing commercial jingles. After moving to Dallas, Texas,
she began singing radio ID's for some of Dallas' most
elite radio stations.
Even
though her love was music, Penny had an extremely strong business savvy to go on the road and
simply sing. Hiring
the best studio musicians and state of the art studios
were expensive, so she kept her main focus on writing and
making a living in the hotel business, where
she excelled.
Her
hard work ethics taught to her by her father proved to be
the key to her success. She learned the business with
a hands-on
approach.
She began as a desk
clerk
and rapidly progressed to positions of ever increasing
responsibility as rooms
division manager,
sales
manager,
national
director
of
sales,
general
manager,
and finally, vice
president.
By the time she was 30, she had accomplished her set
business
goals and was
ready to move to
new challenges.
She
left the hotel business and
for the next four
years worked
for mega
millionaire oilman, K.S. "Bud" Adams, Jr. who owned the
NFL's Houston
Oilers
football
team and numerous other companies. She
served as his executive assistant and also as Vice President
of Kenada Farms, an Adams family interest. Mr. Adams
owned everything from oil and gas interests to
rice farms, cattle ranches, pecan orchards, world class art, an
aircraft company, and
of course,
the football team. If you were going to work directly
for Mr. Adams you had to understand all of those elements.
Penny says that she learned her best negotiating skills from
Mr. Adams as she watched him "wheeling
and dealing"
multi-million
dollar oil
contracts.
After
four years of watching professional team building, Penny
returned to the hotel business, and began using the behind-the-scenes
team building skills that she learned firsthand from some of
the nations most
influential and successful sport champions.
She
began building results oriented sales teams, taking over
revenue troubled hotels and turning them into
productive and profitable organizations
in unprecedented
time. She made it look easy. There will
always be a demand
for putting winning teams together. Ms. Neff has
shared these techniques as a lecturer at universities and
corporate rallies.
"One
of the greatest
achievements and examples of corporate stewardship was to
invest my life in the up-and-coming
talent. To take some of these young people right from
college
and their
first job, train them, and invest in them, and then to see
them walk in
the manner as they were trained, was a tremendous reward. I
presently have soldiers, officers and enlisted that ask me
to mentor them about the corporate world after retirement",
says Neff.
As
a hotel general manager, Ms. Neff used one of her soldier
lessons to keep her employees motivated and running at top
speed. "When I was a general manager, I made my rounds
daily to check on employees. I wanted and needed to
know what made them tick".
Once
upon taking control of a hotel, she took the city bus on the
same route as her hotel housekeepers because she wanted to
know exactly what safety issues confronted them as well as
how far they would have to walk in bad weather.
"It is those kinds of things that make you a great
leader. It is the things that you do behind the scenes
when no one is looking that sets the tone for your
leadership qualities",
says Neff.
The
hotel business afforded me the distinct pleasure of serving
dignitaries and royalty from presidential staff's, from
visiting Ambassadors and military top brass. I have
coordinated security for Hollywood stars and planned galas
for America's top athlete
heroes. You stay in the hospitality industry to serve
and that is really what I do best.
If
you spend anytime with Neff, you will see the many
facets that encompass her style. She has an intense
results-oriented winning style in the market place with a
hint of Vince Lombardi in her team building skills. It
is said that she has the resolve of a ranger and the
intelligence of a Special Forces A Team when it comes to
success.
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