Marlene Poynder is the Australian woman running New York City’s most prestigious five star hotel.
Marlene Poynder is the first woman in the 91 year history of the iconic Carlyle Hotel NYC to be Managing Director. The Australian has been working in elite hotels in Australia, Asia and the USA for more than 30 years and took over this prestigious role at this iconic hotel in NYC’s upper east side earlier this year.
She is a highly regarded results driven leader who is a huge supporter of women in business in leadership roles and believes mentoring is one the most powerful tools. Here she opens up about her hopes for hospitality into the future, how she landed her plum role at Rosewood, and how in this “fourth quarter” of her career she is living out the dream she had for herself at 10 years of age.
Poynder reveals it is her support system within her career that has got her there. She says she never would have achieved that dream if it wasn’t for three different mentors who helped her maintain her self belief along the way.
She is also a believer in teams, and has held positions including General Manager at The Conrad New York Downtown and General Manager of The Waldorf Astoria in Chicago. The Carlyle is one of the world’s most prestigious city hotels with a celebrity history spanning decades.
It is brimming with artworks, is itself a catalogue of design history and has always been live with the sound of some of America’s best musicians at The Cafe Carlyle within the hotel, which opened in 1947, 16 years after the hotel opened. Bono, Cindi Lauper, Mariah Carey, Billy Joel, John Mayer, Bill Murray and Liza Minelli are just a few who have given impromptu performances at the piano in legendary Bemelmans Bar.
The Carlyle became a favourite of Hollywood stars after Ingrid Bergman first stayed there when she filmed Intermezzo. It has captivated the well heeled and the well educated for years and was where Jacqueline Onassis met Audrey Hepburn, and the hotel has appeared in Sex And The City, Gossip Girl, HBO’s Girls and Bravo’s Younger, and the movie “A Very Murray Christmas” starring Bill Murray was entirely filmed at the hotel. The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge stayed there during their first visit to New York.
The hotel produces over 1200 monogrammed pillow cases each year for guests, and Hubert De Givenchy once owned an apartment there, and during the Kennedy administration the hotel’s owner Robert Dowling kept the “Kennedy Duplex” empty in case the president ever wanted to stay.
Many of the guests keep returning multiple times a year, and very few of the world’s biggest stars have not had at least one stay at this elegant, unique, truly original hotel. For more on the Carlyle, go to: https://www.rosewoodhotels.com/en/the…
Marlene Poynder speaks to Renae here from New York City.
No Comments