.png)
Jennifer Barnwell on Speaking Up, Starting Over and Knowing When to Stay
The president of Curator Hotel & Resort Collection on finding her voice in male-dominated boardrooms, the women who found each other along the way and why being your own best advocate matters.
Jennifer Barnwell was in her early thirties, working in hotel real estate, when she seriously considered leaving the industry. Deals at the firm where she worked were going sideways, legal complications were mounting, and the stress was taking its toll. She had always loved school and quietly wondered whether she might be happier as a teacher.
So she did something about it. Without telling her colleagues, and barely mentioning it to friends, she applied to graduate school in New York City, was accepted and started taking classes to become an elementary school teacher.
"I was just going to go down this path of getting my degree and being a legit teacher in New York City," she recalls.
Then Pebblebrook Hotel Trust, a newly formed hotel real estate investment trust based in Washington, D.C., came calling. She interviewed, liked what she heard and decided to give hotel real estate one more chance.
It changed everything.
"Everyone was so smart and lovely and immediately began mentoring me," she recalls of joining Pebblebrook. The move also brought a welcome change of pace and a work environment where she could thrive.
Today, Barnwell is president of Curator Hotel & Resort Collection, which helps independent hotels compete through collective purchasing power, technology partnerships and marketing. Her career has spanned acquisitions, development and asset management, including serving as senior vice president of asset management at Pebblebrook.
Barnwell's career hasn't followed a straight line. Along the way, she's learned to speak up, walk away, build relationships in rooms where women were scarce and recognize that doing everything yourself isn't necessarily a sign of good leadership. Her lessons are practical, and many were learned the hard way.
Don't Wait to Be Invited Into the Room
Barnwell entered hotel real estate at a time when women were few and far between, particularly in investment and finance. At her first company, she remembers just a handful of women on the corporate career track, while virtually all the administrative staff were female.
But rather than allowing that to intimidate her, she approached it as an opportunity.
"I was always like, okay, this is incredible. Like I'm the only woman in this room. How do I get into that room?"
Growing up without a financial safety net had shaped her work ethic. Her parents emphasized education, hard work and the importance of building a career. She knew she needed to make the most of every opportunity.
Even as a junior employee, she asked to attend meetings, volunteered for new assignments and pushed to work on interesting projects. While colleagues sometimes complained that meetings took time away from their actual work, Barnwell saw them as opportunities to learn and gain exposure.
"I just was so curious," she says. "I just wanted to be part of as much as I could."
She wasn't always comfortable or confident. She remembers being assigned to a complicated corporate transaction early in her career, working on financial models and legal documents that stretched her abilities. A senior colleague overseeing the project was patient and supportive, even when she made mistakes.
That experience stayed with her, providing an early example of how much difference a supportive manager could make.
If There Isn't a Network, Build One
At major hotel investment conferences in the late 1990s and early 2000s, Barnwell remembers looking across ballrooms filled almost entirely with men in dark suits.
"When you saw another woman, we were just drawn to each other," she recalls. Eventually, a small group began organizing informal gatherings on the first evening of major conferences, including ALIS and the NYU hospitality investment conference.
They called their network WHIN, short for Women Hospitality Investment Network. Among the women she recalls being involved were Ellen Brown and Julie Purnell. The idea was simple. Get the women together. Talk about their careers, exchange experiences and build relationships.
What began as a small gathering gradually became a fixture of the conference circuit. Barnwell laughs remembering how male colleagues began noticing the women disappearing from cocktail receptions.
"What is this women's thing?" they wanted to know.
What started as informal get-togethers eventually grew into a more established network, she recalls. But what stands out is how organically it began. A handful of women saw a need for connection and created it themselves, long before women's leadership became an industry conversation.
Looking back, Barnwell wishes she had sought out mentors even earlier in her career. She encourages younger women to attend conferences, volunteer at industry events and introduce themselves to people whose careers interest them.
"All they can do is say no," she says. "More often, people say yes."
Being Good at Your Job Isn't the Same as Leading
As Barnwell moved into more senior roles, one of her biggest challenges wasn't mastering a financial model or negotiating a transaction. It was learning to delegate.
A self-described perfectionist, she admits that giving up control did not come naturally. When you've spent years becoming exceptionally good at a job, it can be difficult to hand that work to someone else, particularly when you know you could do it faster yourself.
But she eventually realized that holding on to everything was limiting both her own growth and that of the people working for her.
"You take away their opportunity to learn and grow," she says.
Delegating allowed her team members to develop new skills while freeing her to focus on strategy and the bigger picture.
She remembers her early days as an analyst, spending hours making sure every number in a spreadsheet was correct, only to have a boss ask what the analysis actually meant.
"So what does this tell me?" he would ask.
It was an important shift in perspective. Getting the numbers right was essential, but understanding what they meant was where leadership began.
Don't Become the Boss You Hated
Barnwell learned from good managers, but she also learned plenty from the bad ones. Early in her career, she encountered bosses whose behavior left her determined to lead differently.
"I never wanted to do that to anyone else," she says.
Some of those experiences went beyond poor management. She recalls situations in which colleagues behaved in ways that made her uncomfortable. At the time, she largely accepted it as part of working in a male-dominated environment.
"I guess this is just how it is," she remembers thinking.
Only years later did she fully recognize how inappropriate some of those experiences had been.
"That was not cool. That's not the way they should have acted," she says.
Today, she is far more willing to speak up when a conversation or someone's behavior crosses a line. And as a leader, she wants her team to know they can do the same. She actively encourages employees to tell her when someone, whether a colleague or an outside business partner, makes them uncomfortable.
"I'm not putting up with any of that anymore for myself," she says, adding that she wants to make sure her team members feel comfortable bringing concerns to her.
It's the kind of environment she wishes had existed when she was starting out.
Keep Your Own Receipts
Ask Barnwell what advice she would give a woman who knows she's capable of more but isn't sure how to take the next step, and her answer is refreshingly practical. Start by having the conversation. Tell your manager you're interested in growing. Ask what opportunities might be available. Don't assume someone will notice your hard work and automatically reward you.
"No one's going to just hand you a promotion and a lot more money," she says.
Barnwell practices what she preaches. Every year, she prepares her own summary of accomplishments, challenges and contributions, along with research into compensation. Rather than scrambling to remember everything at review time, she maintains a running document, adding significant achievements as they happen and setting quarterly reminders to update it.
She also makes sure to have conversations about her career and compensation before decisions have already been finalized.
"You have to be your own best advocate."
Her second piece of advice is to find a mentor or trusted sounding board outside your immediate workplace. Someone who can help you think through opportunities, challenges and the decisions that can shape a career.
It's advice Barnwell has earned through experience, from being one of the few women in the room to nearly walking away from hospitality altogether.
Fortunately, she gave the industry another chance. Today, she's helping create the kind of workplace where the next generation of women can find their voices, build their careers and know they belong.
