That (Expletive) Broad by Jennifer Gaynor

Author:Jennifer Gaynor [Gaynor, Jennifer]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Biography & Autobiography, Historical, Women, Business & Economics, Women in Business
ISBN: 9781641379397
Google: vlafzQEACAAJ
Barnesnoble:
Publisher: Jennifer Gaynor
Published: 2020-07-27T00:00:00+00:00

TAKING A GAMBLE

When McDowell saw that gaming was legalized in nearby New Jersey, which was only the second state outside of Nevada to legalize commercial casino gaming, she was inspired. She thought to herself—“It might be worth a shot” to get in on the ground floor of a new industry and “just see whether or not it’s something I might enjoy.” She sent her resume to the marketing directors at several of the companies opening casino resorts in Atlantic City. The woman who was director of public relations at Bally’s Park Place liked her experience and hired her in 1981.

There, she started by editing their in-house publication for a few years. While at Bally’s, she worked with an “extraordinary” woman named Redenia Gilliam. Redenia was a barrier-breaking woman in the gaming industry as the first female African-American vice president of a casino company.

McDowell credits Redenia as being “a very strong mentor for me.” She nominated Redenia for the Gaming Hall of Fame, and Redenia was posthumously inducted in 2016. McDowell said Redenia’s accomplishments are important to note: “You have to recognize that kind of ground-breaking talent.”

Following Bally’s, McDowell spent about a year working in marketing at Playboy before she was recruited by the Tropicana in 1984. She was at the Tropicana for twelve years, until 1996. She had a few mentors, but her most notable, who she credits “probably really defined my career from that point forward,” was Jim Perry. McDowell recounts that Jim “pushed me probably more than anyone ever has in my career.” She went on to work with Jim Perry for the next thirty years, through a number of different publicly-traded gaming companies.

“Jim is the one who really encouraged me to expand my horizons, expand my resume, did not let me slack off at all, ever. He would be the first one to say, ‘You can do better on this.’ To the extent that I look at the professional that I am today, Jim has a lot of credit for that.”

In 1996, McDowell went to work for Casino Data Systems as their East Coast general manager. She considered this experience to be her “baptism under fire as far as learning technology” but she “knew at the time that technology was going to define the industry going forward, so this was something that I was really willing to dig into and work a little deeper.” She was there about a year when her former mentor from the Tropicana, Jim Perry, reached out. He had been hired as the CEO of a gaming company, Argosy Gaming Company, in St. Louis, and wanted her to join him as the corporate vice president of marketing.

Argosy Gaming was distressed and near bankruptcy. He was asking her to “take a young family and move them a thousand miles across the United States to go work for a company that looks like it’s a bond payment away from bankruptcy.”

Jim agreed with her assessment but told her that “if you and I don’t try to do this, the company is probably going to go under.

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