Mr September: Steve Turk — The Women Who Opened Doors

The hospitality entrepreneur, podcaster and hotelier on the female leaders who shaped his career, why some of his biggest opportunities came through women in HR, and the importance of asking for the promotion, the mentor and a seat in the room.

Steve Turk has spent much of his career creating his own opportunities. He started on the pool deck at Loews Miami Beach Hotel, worked his way through food and beverage leadership roles at some of Miami’s best-known hotels, built and sold a hospitality staffing business, returned to hotels, and eventually stepped back into entrepreneurship. Today, he runs Tangy Management, founded Biscayne Coffee, co-hosts Good Morning Hospitality, hosts The Hospitality Mentor podcast and is developing Baya, a new hospitality concept in South Florida.

But when Turk looks back at the moments that moved his career forward, another pattern stands out: women repeatedly opened doors for him.

Many of those women worked in HR. They spotted potential, encouraged him into new roles and helped shape his path through hospitality. It is a reminder that allyship is not one-directional. Careers are built through people noticing talent, sharing access and helping others step into rooms they may not yet have entered on their own.

That idea now shapes Steve's own approach to leadership, mentorship and community-building: be clear about what you want, ask for the opportunity and don’t wait for someone else to guess where you want to go.

We chatted at the Independent Hotel Show Miami to learn more...

You’ve had an unconventional path. Was hospitality always the plan?

Not at all. My father is an employment attorney, and growing up in Miami he represented a lot of hotels, so I was always around hospitality. I went away to school thinking I would become a lawyer like him and realized very quickly that wasn’t what I wanted to do.

My dad basically said, “Whatever you want to do, do it really well. But you always liked hospitality.” So I studied hospitality and eventually ended up at Loews Miami Beach Hotel, starting on the pool deck.

I had some great mentors there, and I had this goal book where I would write every day: “I’m going to be the general manager of an iconic Miami Beach hotel.” I wrote that for years.

Steve on the left at the Loews Miami Beach pool circa 2006

You moved through hotels, entrepreneurship and back again. What did those different chapters teach you?

One of the biggest lessons was that sometimes you get what you think you want and realize it isn’t actually what you want.

I started a hospitality staffing company because I saw a problem in the industry and thought I could do it better. It grew into a company with about 1,300 people on the books, but eventually I realized I hated what I was doing. I was constantly dealing with staffing issues and chasing payments. Fortunately, another company wanted the contracts and bought the business.

Later, I went back into hotels, and before COVID I thought I would probably stay with Loews for a very long time. Then COVID happened, the layers disappeared, and suddenly I was back on the pool deck where I had started 20 years earlier, doing whatever needed to be done. That was when I thought, maybe it’s time to build something again.

When you think about the women who influenced your career, who comes to mind?

Of course, you start with family. My mother and grandmother were huge influences. My mom is from Venezuela, and she used to say something in Spanish that basically translates to, “Don’t cut your wings before you fly.” Don’t decide you can’t do something before you even try.

Professionally, there have been so many women. Sabina Tonarelli got me started in hotels. She was the HR director at Loews Miami Beach and told me, “You’ve got a hospitality smile. You need to come work here.”

Then Susanna Fernandez brought me back to the hotel after I graduated, and Viviana Santisteban was another HR leader who played an important role in my career when I moved to Mandarin Oriental.

There were also people like Linda Villafane, who let me sit in on meetings and helped me understand areas like marketing and PR that weren’t part of my immediate job.

When I really think about it, a lot of my career moves happened because women reached out to me, let me into rooms I wasn’t in yet and helped me see opportunities I might not otherwise have seen.

It’s interesting that so many of the people who opened doors for you were in HR.

I hadn’t really thought about it until we started talking about it. But when I look back at the times I made moves, the majority of them were because HR directors reached out to me.

They knew me, they knew what I could do, and they thought about me when opportunities came up. That made a big difference.

Now that you’re building your own businesses and your own hospitality concept, what does diversity mean to you?

I grew up in Miami, and that is one of the things I love about living here. There are so many cultures, and working in hotels you are surrounded by people from all over the Caribbean, South America and beyond, people from different backgrounds and different walks of life.

For me, it’s about being inclusive of as many people as possible. As we build teams, we look at who is working with us, who is representing us and how we empower them to be the best they can be. Growing up and working in Miami, having that mix of people has always felt very natural to me.

The Hospitality Mentor has also become a big part of what you do. Where did that come from?

When I came out of hotels and started a business again, I remembered what had happened the first time I became an entrepreneur. People would say, “Call me, I’ll help you,” but then when you actually called, everyone was busy. And I realized nobody really wants to be pitched.

So this time I thought, I’m going to start a podcast. Instead of calling a GM and saying, “I’m doing consulting, will you hire me?” I could invite them on the podcast, talk about their career and build a relationship.

I tested it with one GM who wouldn’t take my call. As soon as I said, “Would you like to be on the podcast?” the answer was yes.

Then I thought, why not aim high? I wrote to 60 or 70 hotel CEOs and four of them said yes. After that, PR people started reaching out and it just kept growing.

What I didn’t expect was that the podcast itself would create opportunities. It led to speaking engagements, relationships and eventually the book, Hospitality Unlocked. I had all these great stories from hospitality leaders and wanted to put them into something people could actually use.

Through The Hospitality Mentor, you’ve interviewed a lot of successful women. What have you noticed about the ones who advance?

They speak up about what they want. They make it very clear what they want to do and where they want to go.

Sometimes somebody will say, “I got passed over for this promotion.” My question is: Did you say you wanted the promotion? Did you apply for it? Did you ask to be mentored? Did you ask to be in those meetings?

You have to advocate for yourself. Talk about what you want and ask for it. When opportunities come, raise your hand.

I’ve had conversations with people who say, “I’ve been here ten years and nobody promotes me.” And I’ll ask, “What did you apply for?” Sometimes the answer is nothing. If you have never said what you want, how does anyone know?

Make it crystal clear. Your goals can change, but know what you are working toward. I wrote mine down every day for years.

You mentioned that goal book. Do you still write things down?

I started with a journal called One Line a Day. I was really consistent with it during COVID, so I can look back at 2020 and 2021 and see an entire year of notes I wrote to myself.

Now that I have a family and business is busier, my journaling is more like once a week. But I still journal when I feel really happy or really down. I can go back and see what was bringing me down or what was making me happy, and that helps me understand how to find more balance.

What advice would you give someone who wants a mentor but doesn’t know how to approach people?

Ask people for their advice and their opinions. Don’t be afraid to do that, no matter who they are or how senior they are.

You would be surprised how many people want to help. Maybe they can’t give you half an hour or an hour, but they might give you a few minutes, and something they say can stick with you and really push you forward.

What’s another piece of career advice you wish more people followed?

Try to get into rooms that you’re not in yet.

Ask if you can listen to an executive meeting. Ask if you can sit in on a revenue management meeting. I used to ask Linda and Sarah if I could sit in on marketing and PR meetings because I wanted to understand that side of the world.

That’s where I learned how valuable PR could be and the power of getting your story into a major newspaper or magazine. Later, that understanding helped me build my own following and create opportunities I never would have expected.

Get into those rooms, because you never know where they might lead.

So what’s next for you?

A big focus is Baya. We’re building the first location on a 25-acre tropical fruit farm in South Florida, with 20 high-end bungalows, wellness and food and beverage rooted in the surrounding farming community.

One of the most interesting parts has been building the community before we’ve even built the property. We’re working with LaunchBoom, a platform more commonly associated with crowdfunding and product launches, to create an audience of future guests who are already engaged with Baya before reservations even open. We’ve also signed a second location in Connecticut, so we’re already looking at how the concept can translate to another market.

Following Hospitality Unlocked, I decided to write another book, but this time not a business book. It’s a children’s book called The Moonlight Table.

I have young kids, and we were doing their book reports when I started thinking, I could make a book too.

It’s about children who come into a hotel where their dad works and meet kids from around the world. They’re preparing for a big outdoor dinner, it rains, and suddenly everyone has to figure out how to make the party work inside. The kids bring pieces of their different cultures and communities to the celebration, while the hotel staff shows them how all the different departments work together.

My kids helped me come up with some of the ideas, which made it really fun. Now I’m thinking it could become a whole series. There are certainly enough crazy hotel stories to work with. We may just have to make them all G-rated.