Kimberly Young was feeling good. She had just finished a nearly 90-minute interview with then Lumiere Place director of security Robert Oldani and thought it had went great.
Young was then working as a hiring manager as The President, but was seeking a security supervisor position at the new casino. Unfortunately, Oldani gave her some bad news. “I’m just gonna go ahead and tell you that I’m not going to hire you for the supervisor position,” he said.
The St. Louis native was confused and disappointed, but both of those emotions were quickly replaced with excitement and surprise. “I’m not gonna hire you for that position,” Oldani continued, “because I want to hire you for the manager’s position.”
Even with 12 years in the hospitality industry under her belt, Young thought she was too inexperienced to fill the position.
“He actually saw something in me that I didn’t even see in myself,” Young said. “That just really inspired me to continue to learn and continue to grow – to do whatever it took, within reason, to make sure that I would succeed.”
She did just that, excelling in her new role and going on to become the daytime security manager at River City Casino. Young’s relentless pursuit of being the best, however, goes back much further than her interview with Oldani.
Young grew up in the 1970s and 1980s in Walnut Park, which is an almost entirely black neighborhood. Her household included two working-class parents and two older siblings.
“Growing up in Walnut Park really taught me how to survive,” Young said. “It made me want to do better. It made me want to succeed in life because of everything that was going on around me. I wanted to succeed and make sure that I got out of that environment.”
Despite adverse conditions, Young thoroughly enjoyed her childhood.
“The only thing that I didn’t like about growing up was that they wouldn’t allow me to go to public school,” she joked. “I had to go to private school.”
Young’s first job was in retail, but she quickly found out that it just wasn’t in her. In 1995 she turned to hospitality when she became a cage cashier at Stations Casino because she knew that it was a field that would see growth in the future.
Today, travel and tourism ranks among the top six industries in St. Louis city and county, providing jobs for 88,000 people who earn $3.17 billion in labor income annually. It’s safe to say that Young was right.
It only helped that she thoroughly enjoyed what she was doing.
“It was always something new,” Young said. “I was always learning something, I was always meeting different people, and I just really liked that environment. It was just always something going on.”
While enamored, Young didn’t lose sight of her goal. She was always working and trying to expand her knowledge. She tried to learn about how every department worked and picked the brains of various individuals all over the casino.
Rising through the ranks became easy, thanks to her work ethic, which she attributed to her parents. Just like anyone else, though, Young had obstacles to overcome.
She worked graveyard shifts as a single mother from 1993 until 2009. Young slept during the day before waking up when her daughter got home from school to help her with her homework, make her dinner and get her to bed. Young would then sneak in a little more sleep before heading to work; her mother watched Alexzandria whenever she was gone.
Ironically, Young being a black woman didn’t play a factor in her career until she had reached a managerial position, and the conflicts stemmed from people who looked just like her.
“They would expect me to be a certain way just because I was African-American,” Young said. “I got a lot of resistance. I got more resistance from African Americans than I did from anyone because they felt I should allow them to do things that they weren’t supposed to do. The rules didn’t apply to them because they thought that I should be on their side and see how they thought things should be.”
The issue was an inevitable one due to the sheer volume of black people attracted to hospitality positions. Young said that she believes this interest comes from the amount of entry-level positions available and the absence of education as a necessity for many positions.
“In hospitality they go according to your work ethic, your knowledge, on-the-job training, how well you do with that,” Young said. “I think that’s why it’s more African Americans in the hospitality field.”
Young shined in each of those areas, which is why she is where she is today. The unpredictable nature of her job keeps her on her toes.
“The only thing that doesn’t change is my interaction with my team members on a daily basis,” Young said. “As far as things running the same way on a day-to-day basis, it never does, ever.”
This is the first in a series of profiles of hospitality professionals that Tashan Reed is reporting for The American.
