Celebrating Juneteenth 2024: A Commitment to Human Civility
Kenny Imafidon, Vice President of Operational Excellence shares a few words about the significance of Juneteenth and importance of civil conversations.
Aug 16, 2022
This past month Marisa Serrano and Kenny Imafidon spent some time visiting some of our hotels in the Davidson Hospitality Group East Region. On this particular road trip, they visited the Embassy Suites Berkeley Heights in New Jersey along with the Canopy and Sheraton University City, both in Philadelphia.
The mission of the trip was to personally thank the team members for all of their hard work throughout the year. In addition, it was an opportunity to review the Davidson DNA and pillars which are the backbone of our organization.
Each team had the opportunity to present their performance to date in regard to how they are creating value for our associates, our guests and our owners. Team engagement and recruiting was a key point throughout the discussions, and it was very clear from the visits that we have some very engaged teams and leaders.
Two very key Davidson initiatives were reviewed and presented by our hotel teams. The first one being our philanthropic efforts as an organization with our partners at Give Kids the World (GKTW). Each team presented their fun raising efforts to date with GKTW. This included the Berkeley Heights team’s fundraiser of “Pie the General Manager in the face.” At the Canopy Philadelphia the team has created a “store” in the Human Resources office where proceeds from the sales go to GKTW.
The second Davidson initiative that was presented was SPARK. Davidson’s SPARK innovation process is evolving to be both incremental and culturally resonant; it can be game changing innovation that creates large scale value for our owners and/or drives revenue, mid-scale efficiency implementations or creative ideas that drive relevance and in turn, increase guest & team member loyalty and add to our positioning propositions. At the Sheraton University, they have created a SPARK studio for their team members to meet and generate ideas to help this process of Igniting innovation and creating value.
This was a great few days on the road for both Marisa and Kenny. They both truly enjoy working with and providing support to our on property team and helping them create value and making the Davidson Difference.