Laurie Stroll '83 Finds Strength in Community

Three years ago, Laurie Stroll ’83, president and owner of the Newport, Rhode Island destination management firm Newport Hospitality, gave the most significant business pitch of her life. Responding to an unexpected phone call, she threw on a business suit and hustled down to a local hotel to field hard-nosed questions from a battery of Volvo executives. Their overriding question: How would you and your seven employees coordinate complex week-long arrangements for 2,000 visitors at the only American stopover of the world-renowned Volvo Ocean Race?

Without hesitation, Laurie responded, “I absolutely can pull together a superior team,” citing her firm’s extensive relationships and depth of experience in Rhode Island’s hospitality and civic communities. “In that, no big hospitality business from the outside can match us,” she told the executives. The Volvo executives were persuaded and in May of 2015, Newport Hospitality produced 65 events and handled accommodations, transportation, and hospitality for over 2,000 people. “To accomplish that, our full-time staff of 7 mushroomed to 74,” recalls Laurie. “It was remarkable and daunting: We did almost two years of business in ten days.”

To solve problems you need to reach out via your relationships and your community.Laurie was impeccably prepared for the challenge thanks to her more than 20 years at Newport Hospitality.  The firm plans and orchestrates events, tours, and other activities for mostly high-end corporate clients. "Everything is customized; everything is priced differentially," she observes. Drawing on business savvy and business relationships, Laurie and her program managers secure value for their customers in both pricing and service. “Over the years, if I’ve learned anything,” she says, it’s that to solve problems you need to reach out via your relationships and your community—you need to collaborate in crafting a solution.”

Her UMass Roots and Launch Pad

Laurie’s prowess in planning, improvising, and overcoming obstacles dates to her UMass years, when as a single mother, she doggedly succeeded both as a parent and a hospitality student. “My first and only goal was self-sufficiency—a job with medical insurance,” she confessed. In that quest, she gained emotional and pragmatic support from a like-minded community in North Village, the university’s housing development for single parents and young families. 

And she added professional experience and career leverage through an HTM-directed student internship with Hampshire College’s Food Services. Internships and experimental learning, she notes, have always been a hallmark of the HTM program. Today, they are touchstones in every Isenberg department.

Seizing Opportunities

After graduation, Laurie shifted to the hotel business, diversifying her skill set at several venues including the Boston Harbor Hotel and the Sheraton in Mansfield.   “Whoever you’re sitting next to could help you get that next job,” she told students in a recent visit to Isenberg. For Laurie, that came in 1992, when she joined Newport Hospitality on the urging of its founder, Sheryl Spanos ’83, a former HTM classmate. 

Working from home in a largely two-person operation during much of the 1990s, Laurie helped grow the firm and its business and client network. That accelerated markedly beginning in 2004, when Laurie bought the business from Sheryl, who moved overseas. Since then, Laurie has driven rapid growth at Newport Hospitality, while also elevating her own brand as a leader in the destination management profession.

Don't let others define you.Under Laurie’s leadership in 2007, Newport Hospitality became the first and only firm in Rhode Island to be accredited by the industry-defining Association of Destination Management Executives International (ADMEI).  In 2004, she became the first (and to date only) woman to chair the Rhode Island Hospitality Association in its 30-year history. In 2014, Isenberg’s HTM program honored her with its Stephen Elmont award—it’s alumnus of the year accolade. And in February, she excelled as opening keynote speaker at the third annual Women of Isenberg Conference.

In that role, Laurie’s advice to her largely female student audience drew deeply from her own formative experiences: “Build your own personal and business brands; cultivate a positive ‘yes I can attitude, and lead your own life—don't let others define you.”