A Manager is as Good as his People by John Dersham

I just began my fourth year in tourism. When I was hired by our board of directors I had been a 30 year veteran at Eastman Kodak, in management and marketing. I was convinced from the job description that the job as Executive Director of Tourism would be a good fit for my history. I already had a sincere love and passion for our beautiful county. After being moved four times by Kodak to different parts of the country our move here was hand picked by my wife Kyle and I who started coming here on vacation a few years prior.
The first thing I asked our board when hired, was to tell me about our staff, how long have they worked here? What are their ambitions and do they feel they are stable performers who have accrued a solid working knowledge of our business? I learned a long time ago that a manger is only as good as the people who report to him/her. I hit the jackpot in this category. So much so, that we have the exact same staff that I started with four years ago. These individuals are dedicated, reliable, and loyal and they offer first class customer service to our visitors at our information center and to our phone callers. They also help the hundreds of people each week requesting information from our website or from social media accounts. They, along with our board which is made up of seasoned tourism professionals and local business professionals really helped me jump start my career at DeKalb Tourism. The board also introduced me to the key players in state and regional tourism that would help me even further.
At DeKalb Tourism we have four employees. They include me as Executive Director, Kayla Worthey (Marketing Manager), Michele Wooden (Administrative Assistant) and Avice Pearson who works Fridays and every weekend including most holidays. Avice is 100% reliable, she is always here when she is supposed to be and she is always early. Last year we promoted our Administrative Assistant Kayla Worthey to position of Marketing Manager and promoted Office Assistant Michele Wooden to Administrative Assistant.
You may have noticed Kayla Worthey is now writing some of our weekly columns. Some weeks when I am traveling it is hard to get the column done and turned in on time. Kayla came to me with a couple very interesting pieces of writing she had done. She wrote first person about herself and family’s personal trips to locations around DeKalb County. I was so impressed by her writing and by the idea she had that I asked Jared Felkins at the Times Journal if we could use Kayla’s articles on weeks I could not produce one. They agreed and now you will see Kayla’s very personal stories of journeys around beautiful DeKalb County. Kayla is a graduate of Southeast Tourism Society’s Marketing College. Marketing College is a certified continuing education degree for the tourism industry.
I feel very fortunate after having a very wonderful career at Kodak to reside in another extremely interesting and rewarding career and it is a sincere blessing to have begun this position with wonderful, hard working knowledgeable people whom were already in place.