Alumna Blends Hospitality & Community in Her Own Backyard

Madison Carroll Snyder (’14, MSBA ’18)
Chief of Staff & Director of Carroll Hospitality, The Carroll Companies

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Tell me about yourself and what you currently do.

I’m Chief of Staff for the Carroll Companies, my family’s business, and Director of Hospitality. We currently have over $1 billion in mixed use projects in the pipeline. I oversee the construction and operations of our mixed use/hospitality division on one side. On the Chief of Staff side, I amusingly call myself the “director of miscellaneous”. If there’s a new project or an idea that is in the inception phase, it tends to fall under my purview. Also, I lead anything related to policy or employee initiatives. As a company with over 400 employees and $5.2 billion in assets, there’s always something new and exciting to work on. I’m starting to put together a list of everything I do so I can delegate tasks when I’m on maternity leave, and it’s a very long list! But it’s fun, too – every day is different!

Share a career accomplishment of which you are particularly proud.

I’m extremely proud of bringing the management of our first hotel in-house. When we opened Hyatt Place in downtown Greensboro in 2019, we had never built a hotel, let alone operate one. So, the Hyatt brand required us to have a third-party management company. After about two years I noticed that they really didn’t have a finger on the pulse of our community, and I thought we knew our backyard better than they did. This particular hotel is located just two blocks away from our corporate office, in the town where I was born and raised. It just made more sense for my family to lend its expertise. After two years, I felt gutsy enough to take it on. After a multi-month process of getting the accounting systems and operating systems in order, we developed an organization chart for this entirely new management company that we needed to exist under our corporate umbrella. I’m very proud of that work! It was a big undertaking, but it was a great experience.

You’re very passionate about the community in which you live, readily giving back to nonprofit organizations. Can you tell us more about that?

It’s just ingrained in what I do each day. My older sister has Type 1 Diabetes, so we do a lot with the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation, which just rebranded to Breakthrough T1D. Right now, we’re getting our entire company amped up for their annual Walk to Cure Diabetes; it’s the one initiative that we do as an entire company, bringing everyone together for a good cause.

Over the years I’ve done a lot of different volunteering and fundraising with local not-for-profits that are important to our family and community, such as Family Services of the Piedmont, Operation Smile and the Community Theater of Greensboro, just to name a few. I’m currently working with an organization called Out of the Garden Project on one of our agricultural sites. We have a large garden and are working to distribute fresh food to their food banks; it’s been a really rewarding project. In addition, I sing at my church and serve on several boards. I am the past chair of the Arts Council of Greater Greensboro and I’m the vice chair for the Convention and Visitors Bureau Board of Directors for the city. I’m passionate about how we can make our community a place where people want to not just visit but have a great experience. For our arts ecosystem, it’s crucial for our city to be a great place to live, work and stay.

How do you balance your professional life with your philanthropy work, while pursuing your hobbies and passions?

What is balance? Ha! I always make sure that the philanthropy I’m working with is tied to the direction of our company, my personal passions and the overall health of our community. The Convention and Visitors Bureau – that’s obviously tied to the hospitality piece of our work. We all benefit when visitors come to the community.
The balance of time is not always easy, but I try to prioritize well. It all comes together and is central to my personal mission.

What inspired you to complete both your undergraduate education and MSBA degree from Wake Forest?

When I was a kid, I told my dad I wanted to work with him and build hotels. At that time, our company had just focused on multifamily housing, self-storage and some single-family subdivisions. He ultimately told me, “All right, we’ll do that together. But you need to go to a really good business school.” Since Wake Forest is one of the best, it was an obvious choice!

After I completed my undergraduate business degree, I immediately went to work for the company. The first day my dad sat me down and said, “You’ve gotten a great education. Now I will start teaching you how to actually do your job.” I did that for three years before I decided I wanted more managerial, hands-on training. When I started looking at programs, I started with MBA programs. While an MBA sounded great, I really saw the future of data analytics being so important in the construction industry. For so long, past generations have functioned in this industry on gut feelings and gut reactions. However, we’ve seen through recessions that this approach doesn’t always work. You need data to back up your decision making in real estate and construction. That’s why the MSBA program was enticing to me. I didn’t want to be a data analyst. I wanted to be someone who a data analyst could hand a report to, then easily present those findings to the leadership team so that we could all make a very educated decision about which projects to move forward with.

Did your experience at Wake Forest have an impact on your career path?

Yes, I definitely think so! My brain is naturally data focused. That’s why the MSBA program was interesting to me. Through my time at Wake Forest, with hands-on learning experiences and exposure to public speaking and presentations, I learned that I wanted to be front facing. In my career, I wanted the balance of diving into my spreadsheets in the morning, while participating in strategy meetings and talking about the big picture of the company in the afternoons. The way Wake Forest educates the whole person truly helped me craft the perfect job for myself.

 

Spotlight interview conducted by Alumni Council member Molly Rutledge (‘04, MSBA ’20).