Nevadan At Work: MGM Grand University Director Readies Casino Leaders of the Future

LAS VEGAS, Nevada -- Like a terrier herding small livestock, Barbara Hewitt is consumed with developing and implementing the training programs essential to a company the size of MGM Mirage and for the growth it has planned.

The company, which is already at 70,000 employees, will grow by 28,000 workers in the next five years just to keep up with announced expansion plans. Projects include Project CityCenter here, and developments in Atlantic City; Detroit; Biloxi, Miss.; the United Kingdom; and Macau.

Hewitt's job as executive director of the MGM Grand University is not to recruit all these workers, but to prepare a large cross-section for advancement, to match the skills they add with the needs of her company and to help prepare executives with the leadership skills necessary to marry the two.

Otherwise many employees would not have the skill sets to advance from the "back-of-the-house" to the "front-of-the-house" and executives trying to staff their operations would not have a pool of higher-skilled talent.

To date, Hewitt has been responsible for 24,000 employees, those at MGM Grand plus the former Mandalay Resort Group hotel-casinos.

Corporate university training programs are common among Fortune 500 companies, but are otherwise unheard of in Las Vegas.

In the year's first half alone, 15,000 workers went through the university programs, up from 5,500 in the first six months of 2005.

All of this may be more than most human resources executives can imagine, but Hewitt is enthusiastic, not confounded.

In a recent interview in her fourth-floor, corner office overlooking the final stages of construction at the MGM Grand Signature project, Hewitt was animated, confident of the future and proud of past accomplishments.

Question: What drives you?

Answer: Success. I think being the best at what I do. I take great pride in our product, the quality of what we represent and when I see that product evolve and we get recognized through awards, it just makes me want to do more.

Question: What does the executive director of a corporate university do?

Answer: I'm responsible for the strategic development of training plans for the properties, for executing the vision and for the strategic direction for learning and development initiatives at the MGM Grand, Mandalay Bay, Luxor and the Signature properties. I work with senior-level executives, management business partners and industry leaders to align our training goals with organizationwide processes and business needs. I oversee four units in the university: leadership training at all levels; general training including language training; computer-based training; and service excellence.

Question: How has the merger changed it?

Answer: As we took on the merger, it was like looking at the cultures and figuring out how to integrate them. Yet, as we plowed through those strategies, now a year later, we were successful. We had some bumps in the road; we had to work out some kinks in processes. But I can't speak enough about the support we received from the property presidents.

One of the things I'm proudest about is our contribution to that.

Question: How did you get into this?

Answer: I opened Summerlin Hospital in 1997, their training department. Before that, I was at Desert Springs for about four years. I came to the MGM Grand University after just finishing graduate school.

I was very interested in breaking out of health care where I'd been for 17 years. I'd been exposed to lots of industries and thought it would be interesting to branch out and broaden my skills in other industry sets. A mutual friend had spoken to Miriam Hammond, senior vice president of human resources here at MGM. She let her know I was looking for other opportunities.

I worked with Miriam at Desert Springs Hospital for close to a year. So I knew Miriam and had worked with her. I got a call one day that there was an opportunity here.

I said, "Now the gaming industry, that's interesting." The long and short of it was six or seven interviews later, I got the job.

Question: Why the interest in gaming?

Answer: Because it's a huge part of what Las Vegas is. I'd lived here 10 years and wasn't familiar with anyone in the gaming industry. And I think I started out more out of curiosity than anything else. I thought, let's go, let's give this a shot and see what this is all about.

Miriam shared with me a little about the company and the potential for this MGM Grand University, which I had never heard of.

I thought it was fascinating that the gaming industry had a university.

And so we talked a little about what the university does and is responsible for. I met some of the most brilliant minds in business.

I was absolutely blown away by the integrity and the professionalism of the people. They made me think this was a company I'd like to work for.

And I had an once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to try another industry. I was ripe to try and the timing was right. I thought I'd give it a go and if it worked out, great, and if not, nothing to lose. I have never looked back. It's worked out great.

Question: What do you like most about your job?

Answer: The opportunity to be creative, to come forward with a vision, ideas, new ways to improve what we're doing. And I'm never turned down. If I can make a good business case for something, it's supported 100 percent.

What keeps me here is the evolution, to be able to make this university one of the best in its class and to be benched after, by the likes of PepsiCo. We've just really been able to take the university and make it a strategically aligned entity. That is truly what has lent to our credibility over the years.

Question: What do you like most about MGM?

Answer: The leadership. The vision and the operating unit are what keep you going. There are some companies out there that don't really support education.

But to find a company that supports it, there's nothing you can't do, and you can support the company in such positive ways.

Question: What do you like least?

Answer: It's so dynamic and so changing, and there are so many opportunities, it's hard to say what I like least. Maybe it's the pace.

Sometimes you wish you could just stop and almost take a breather, but the flip side is you get addicted to the pace, and you thrive on the pace and what you can get done, even though it can be very stressful at times.

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