Earlier this summer, six Oregon hospitality operators joined us at Willamette University for Uplift Leadership’s Career Summit. We got to spend the day chatting with young people who are trying to figure out what they want to do, and demonstrating to them, authentically, what a career in Hospitality could look like.

If you haven’t run into Uplift Leadership yet, they’re a Lake Oswego based non-profit that builds career readiness programming for young people ages 16 to 26. The Career Summit is their flagship event. It took place over four days at Willamette this July and is built for teens and recent graduates who are new to the workforce and still sorting out where they might fit in the adult world. Uplift calls it a “playshop” rather than a workshop, which I think perfectly captures how it is run. Students stay on campus, eat there, and work through a program built around interactive sessions instead of lectures. They cover the practical mechanics of getting hired, from resume writing skills and mock interviews to elevator pitches and professional headshots. They also teach the essential skills that professionals need: work ethic, adaptability, and how to carry your weight on a team. Uplift’s whole reason for existence is to open doors for these young people that might otherwise stay shut, and that’s a mission we’re glad to stand beside.

Our part in the program this summer was small, but it was the fun part. Uplift asked us to table at the Career Summit and bring with us local leaders and employers to talk with students about their careers and experiences in our industry. Jack Hott, Treva Gambs, Matthew Miller, Taryn Nottage, Scott Snyder, and Whitney Durst all showed up, and every one of them are true hospitality professionals with years of experience behind them, willing to talk honestly about how they got where they are.

Treva runs Gamberetti’s in downtown Salem, along with the Markum Inn and G3 Pizza and Burgers, and she’s been feeding people in the valley for roughly thirty years. So, true to form, she brought pizza. Food does something a pamphlet simply can’t…it warms up the room, gives students something to do with their hands, and provided shy (at first) students an easy reason to wander over to the table and strike up a conversation.

The pizza was the icebreaker, but not the whole point. Students came for the pizza but stayed for the stories. Each operator came with materials about their business and any current job openings and shared their lived experiences with the students. Nobody who came to table with us walked a straight line to where they are now, and they shared their honest experiences – taking a shift because they needed the money, then discovering something they loved and following their passion. When a student has spent a week learning about career paths and corporate ladders, hearing a successful business owner say that they got their start bussing tables or steaming lattes can shift their perspective…maybe that barista gig they took to afford their classes is truly the first rung on their ladders, not just a “for now” job.

And that’s the point we drove home. Hospitality is one of the few industries where you can start without a degree, connections, nor a clear plan, and still build a successful life. You can walk in the door as a host or a dishwasher and eventually find yourself managing the place or even opening your own place. The skills you learn interacting with guests in these crucibles stay with you for life. Once you can learn to read a room, deescalate an unhappy guest, keep your head during a rush, and lead a team of people who are counting on you, you can do anything, anywhere. Very few fields let you move that fast and that far on effort and merit rather than which school you got into.

That story is especially worth telling here in Oregon, where hospitality operates and hires in every county, from the coast to the city to the high desert, in the big towns and the small ones most folks have never heard of, where you can see the whole milky way once the sun sets. For a young person weighing options, a job in hospitality becomes a graspable dream, a good job within driving distance from where they already live, and a career they can build without leaving home.

We also got to shed light on what a hospitality career looks like past the entry point. There’s still this idea that working in hospitality is just how you pay your rent until you break into your “real” job. Every operator who joined us at the table, and every set of eyes reading this now, proves that idea false. They didn’t get pulled out of hospitality by something better. They dug their heels into hospitality because the work was worth doing, they enjoyed it, and they built their lives and businesses on it.

Treva, Matt, Taryn, Scott, Jack and Whitney did a great job connecting to these young people. Thank you all for showing up and sharing your stories.

If you would like to represent our industry, speak with young people considering a job in our field, or find other ways to get involved, contact OHF or email me directly at rdonley@oregonrla.org.