Welcome to the Team! Meet Jay Smith

We are growing!

Please join us in welcoming the newest member of our team—the esteemed Jay Smith, former Director of Sales with Hotel Irvine. Jay first found his calling in hospitality as an underage busboy at the Chateau Louise Resort outside of his hometown of Chicago. After earning a hospitality degree at the University of Nevada Las Vegas, he entered Stouffer Hotels’ management trainee program and got into the world of revenue management at various hotels in Los Angeles. He served as Director of Sales at landmark properties such as Westin Century Plaza, Beverly Hilton and, most recently, Irvine Company Resorts.

We asked Jay a few questions to help you get to know him better…

What do you think are the best skills that you bring to your job?
The ability to exhaust everything chasing a solution should one exist.

Who is someone you admire, and why? Economist Thomas Sowell whom playwright David Mamet called ‘our greatest contemporary philosopher’.  I wish I was as great a thinker as he and, if that were true, to be able to distill and communicate complex thoughts into the simplest of terms is worthy of admiration

What are you happiest doing, when you’re not working? 
Something physical which is the opposite of what my work is

Tell me three pet peeves. 
Silverware placement in dishwasher rack blades up, allowing a rude interruption and then losing my place because I was thinking of the rudeness, having pet peeves

If you could be anywhere other than here, right this minute, where would you be?  
Ordering a drink at a ballgame before heading to a concert

Flashback to when you were 10 years old. What do you want to be when you grow up? 
Probably a Beatle during baseball's off-season

 If we went to happy hour, what would you order? 
Happy hour is a two for one so a freezing cold Guinness on draft followed by an old fashioned made with Bulleit Bourbon.

 Finish this sentence. On Sunday mornings, you can usually find me... Driving to LA on my way to pitch for the Condors, my adult baseball league.

Name a few of your daily habits: 
Get 15,000 steps every day, read for at least thirty minutes & capture a great moment of that day and relive it…if the day is that bad search your memory.

What publications do you regularly read? Wall Street Journal, LA and Orange County Business Journals 

How do you want people to remember you? 
Dependable, caring and complete,  if not greatly flawed!