About
I didn't follow a straight line — I followed curiosity.
What looks like two different careers is actually one continuous story. The thread running through all of it: a genuine interest in people, a deep respect for the experience of being somewhere, and a belief that the details are never small.
The career, honestly.
Hospitality wasn't a career choice. It was just life.
I was born into a family-owned restaurant environment. I grew up around Chili's in San Bruno with my dad — watching how a dining room runs, how a team moves, how a guest is made to feel welcome before they've even been seated. I didn't study hospitality. I absorbed it. By the time I took my first paid restaurant job, the rhythm of hospitality already felt familiar — but working inside the operation allowed me to turn that familiarity into skill, judgment, and responsibility. That foundation never left me.
Then I went deep.
At Pacific Catch in San Francisco, I grew from Hostess and Server into Hourly Supervisor, then Restaurant Manager, then Interim General Manager, then General Manager. Each step added a new layer: staffing, hiring, training, scheduling, labor, budgets, inventory, purchasing, vendors, facilities, events, operational systems, service recovery, real-time decision-making. By the time I left in 2015, I had built and run the full operation — not just managed a shift. That world taught me things no classroom could: how to read a room, how to lead under pressure, how to build a team that actually cares, and how to make a guest feel like the most important person in the space.
Then I followed the people.
When I moved into Human Resources, it wasn't a departure — it was a natural extension. The same instincts that made me good at hospitality made me good at HR: noticing what people need before they ask, creating environments where people feel valued, and building the systems that make that experience consistent at scale. I spent nearly a decade at Life Centers of Kansas building their HR function, leading two HRIS implementations, and helping the organization grow from approximately 60 to 130 employees without losing what made it work.
Kansas City gave me something I didn't expect.
The last ten years in the Kansas City area gave me the opportunity to experience somewhere new, build relationships in a different community and gain perspective beyond the place where I grew up professionally. It was here that I expanded my career from hospitality and operations into Human Resources, supporting a growing human services organization and learning an entirely different kind of responsibility. That chapter added depth to how I understand people, workplaces and leadership — and showed me just how transferable the foundations of hospitality really are.
The through-line was always the same.
Whether I was managing a restaurant floor or implementing an HR system, the work was always about people — what they need, how they feel, and what it takes to build something they can rely on. HR and People Operations weren't a reinvention. They were an expansion of a foundation I'd been building since childhood.
The person behind the work
Outside the résumé.
There's a version of this section that lists hobbies in bullet points. This isn't that.
I'm fascinated by the way a place shapes an experience. San Francisco has deeply influenced me through its energy, food, design and instinctive curiosity. My last decade in the Kansas City area gave me a different perspective — space to experience a new region, build community and understand how hospitality and culture take shape somewhere entirely different. I'm also drawn to Seattle and to cities in general: the density of ideas, the quality of the restaurants and the way thoughtful design appears in unexpected places.
I travel when I can, and I travel with intention — researching hotels the way some people research investments, building itineraries around meals and always coming home with a list of details, ideas and experiences I want to recreate.
All of this is connected to the work. The curiosity, the attention to detail, the instinct to make things feel considered — that's not something I turn on professionally. It's just how I move through the world.
I plan gatherings the way other people plan projects — with real thought given to who's in the room, what they'll eat, and what the evening will feel like from start to finish.
I give unusually thoughtful gifts. It's a reflex. I notice what people mention in passing and file it away.
I'm genuinely curious about how businesses work — the operations behind the experience, the decisions that shape culture, the small choices that compound into something distinctive.
I find emerging technology and AI genuinely interesting, not intimidating. I like understanding how tools work and figuring out where they actually help.
I'm drawn to beautiful spaces — restaurants, hotels, homes, offices — and I notice immediately when a space has been designed with care versus assembled without it.
On Curated by Cass
On Curated by Cass.
Curated by Cass is not an attempt to turn myself into a brand. It is a place to bring together the parts of my experience, perspective and personality that do not fit neatly onto a résumé.
The name came naturally because curation is what I do — in my work, in my life and in the way I approach any experience worth having. It means noticing what matters, understanding how the pieces relate, editing out what does not serve the experience and bringing everything together with intention.
Putting myself out here is simply a way to tell the fuller story: where I have been, what I have learned, how I think and what I might build next. Curated by Cass is not a persona. It is my point of view, thoughtfully presented.
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