ARDA WIN: Helping Build Strong Leaders

Empowering…positive reinforcement…great networking! It was one of those rare opportunities for [mostly] young, aspiring career [mostly] women have for a day-long meeting to get great advice and encouragement from women who have achieved leadership roles in the timeshare industry. It was one of those heady events that leave you excited and unable to sleep – the ARDA WIN Winter Conference in Orlando held on January 23, 2025.

Dump the Trash…HEADTRASH!

According to the keynote speaker, Renie Cavallari, “Successful people aren’t necessarily smarter, happier, or more competent. They are simply better at dumping their HeadTrash!” Her best-seller of that name talks about how our inner critic is the ‘leading killer of human potential.’ Cavallari shared strategies to overcome negative self-talk and to quit questioning yourself.

“Your thoughts shape your reality, but if those thoughts are negative or undermining, they suck your energy and shift your focus from strength and self-confidence to worry and fear,” says Cavallari. She is the founder, CEO, and Chief Instigator of Aspire, a global transformational training and culture development company that specializes in inspired learning that shifts human behavior and awakens potential.

Renie Cavallari is an award-winning organizational anthropologist and is the owner of four companies, most notably the founder of Aspire, www.poweredbyaspire.com, a globally recognized firm which specializes in transformational leadership training that shifts human behavior and strategically improves performance.

She is also the founder of the RCI Institute, www.rciinstitute.com. [I know what you’re thinking: No. Not that RCI!] The RCI Institute in this case is a leadership optimization firm, which also focuses on senior-level executive coaching.

Cavallari’s remarks were aimed at teaching how to stop questioning yourself, which fills you with self-doubt. Her goal was to teach you how to gain the skills to decrease your anxiety, awaken your potential, and find more joy. Filled with humor and real-life stories, listeners came away with practical strategies for self-improvement.

Hearing From Leaders First-Hand

Another session featured a panel of professional women: Catherine Lacey, SVP, Meetings and Member Experience at ARDA; Lanie Kane Hanan, CEO of ONE; Fiona Downing, CEO of FNTX; and Sarah Koves, SVP, Brand Strategy at Travel+Leisure Company, shared valuable insights for women aspiring to advance in the timeshare industry. (See the article, “A Woman’s Guide to Leadership,” in the April 2025 issue of Resort Trades.]

Orlando Pride

Creating Orlando’s professional women’s soccer club, the Orlando Pride, was a daunting task, according to the club’s founder and ambassador Kay Rawlins. Rawlins helped establish the Pride, a member of the National Women’s Soccer League, which began competing professionally in the 2016 season. Rawlins set an amazing example of what a determined, ambitious woman can achieve. There are only fifteen soccer clubs in the League. There weren’t any women’s clubs in Florida when Rawlins came on the scene fourteen years ago.

Before leaving her home in the U.K. to join her husband in the U.S., she had no involvement in professional sports at all. But she had been an avid season ticket holder for her home team, the Stoke City Football Club, the Potters. When she heard the Potters were looking for American-based affiliates, she knew she just had to get involved. Little did she imagine she’d be one of the founders of the tenth women’s club to join the National Soccer League!

No Experience? No Problem

Hers is a tale of how a mom and housewife without a college education seized on a vision, worked her way into a senior position, went back to college to obtain degrees in business and sports education, and become the founder of a professional sports organization.

One interesting take-away she shared was a study proving that the self-discipline and team player mentality students get from playing in school provides them with a marked advantage in the professional world.

Financial Literacy

Ann Marie Williams, VP, financial advisor, senior portfolio manager, for Morgan Stanley provided a very clear and concise soup-to-nuts set of instructions for planning for your financial future. She began by presenting the basics. What are your assets and income; what are your expenses; and what are your long-term goals?

She explains that the first step in learning to manage your finances is to sit down and perform an honest assessment of where you stand and where you want to go. First, we have to address our relationships with money.

For many of us, we are brought up to postpone considering the topic. Many of us are ashamed about the thoughts, beliefs, and assumptions we have about money. That we never talk about!

For the most part, we are not taught about handling finances in high school or college. Some women+ are embarrassed that they don’t understand investing in the stock market — or even basic financial literacy.

Some women+ try to budget but can’t stick to it and blame themselves. In many cases, we accumulate debt. Car loans, mortgages, student loans…the monthly payments seem so affordable when we’re the buyer. But eventually, we know the piper will demand his due. The key, says Williams, is to remember that we need to be in charge of our long-term future and must take control.

Business Communications 101

Another skill that’s not typically addressed in school is communications. Perhaps we learned how to diagram a sentence or write a term paper, but how about an effective email? Hilton Grand Vacations’ VP of Communications Bree Balchunas gave basic rules for structuring emails, conducting meetings, and putting together presentations. Most of her advice was centered around keeping the message clear and concise.

She explained there should be three parts to an email: the title, which should tell the reader what’s going on; the body of the text, which should state the objective or purpose of the email; and a call to action. Any other ancillary information goes below the fold.

Brevity should be the rule when it comes to conducting a meeting. She suggests the following:

● Prepare an agenda in advance.
● Define the purpose.
● Start on time.
● End early in 25-to-30 minutes or less.
● Wrap up by reviewing action items.

Balchunas had great tips for presentations:

• Rule #1: Use images, not word-heavy slides.
• Rule #2: Use large fonts, even 50 points if you’re trying to reach the back of a meeting room.
• Rule #3: Use a wide screen and have your presentation in an horizontal format.

Following Balchunas’ advice on business communications, Marlaine Hudgins, associate director, digital workplace communications for Marriott Vacations Worldwide explained the role on using CoPilot. AI is such a new and burgeoning tool, we’ve only uncovered the tip of the iceberg when it comes to assisting us in our careers and in furthering the interests of our organizations.

In her office, Hudgins explains that it’s like having a digital assistant that can help you draft emails, summarize meeting notes, generate reports, search for information, and create presentations.

Copilot Explains:

1. Communication: Copilot can help draft and review emails, chat messages, and reports, ensuring that your communication is clear, concise, and professional.
2. Scheduling and Planning: It can manage calendars, schedule meetings, and send reminders, making sure you never miss an important appointment or deadline.
3. Data Analysis: Copilot can analyze large sets of data, generate insights, and create visual reports, helping you to make informed business decisions.
4. Research and Information Gathering: Need to compile information quickly? Copilot can search the web, internal databases, and other resources to gather relevant data for your projects.
5. Document Creation: Whether it’s a PowerPoint presentation, a Word document, or an Excel spreadsheet, Copilot can help you create and format documents with ease.
6. Workflow Automation: It can integrate with various business tools (like CRM systems, project management software, etc.) to automate repetitive tasks and streamline your workflows.

Copilot’s explanation encourages its use as a way to can save time, increase efficiency, and focus on more strategic tasks. As a value-added bonus: because it’s AI-powered, it learns and improves over time.

In Resort Trades offices, we have found ChatGPT4 to answer our needs in many cases. For the purpose of this article, I asked ChatGPT to explain the difference:

While both ChatGPT-4 and Copilot offer AI-powered assistance for business communications, they serve different purposes and excel in distinct areas depending on an organization’s needs.

1. Integration and Ecosystem
   • Copilot: Microsoft’s Copilot is deeply integrated into the Microsoft 365 ecosystem, working seamlessly with applications like Outlook, Word, Excel, Teams, and PowerPoint. This makes it an ideal choice for businesses already using Microsoft’s suite, as it provides contextual assistance based on the data within those platforms.
   • ChatGPT-4: On the other hand, ChatGPT-4 is a standalone AI chatbot developed by OpenAI. It can be accessed via a web app or API and provides broader general AI assistance across a wide range of topics and industries, without being tied to a specific software suite.
2. Communication Assistance
   • Copilot: It excels in streamlining communication within the Microsoft environment. It can suggest email responses, summarize Teams meetings, and enhance document collaboration by offering real-time suggestions based on previous conversations and documents.
   • ChatGPT-4: ChatGPT is more versatile for generating creative content, drafting emails from scratch, providing writing assistance across different styles, and offering ideas beyond standard business contexts. It may require manual copying and pasting into other applications for further use.
3. Automation and Workflow Efficiency
   • Copilot: A major advantage of Copilot is its ability to automate tasks within Microsoft applications, such as generating reports in Excel, formatting documents in Word, and creating presentations in PowerPoint. It works with existing data to provide contextual suggestions that fit business needs.
   • ChatGPT-4: While ChatGPT does not have native automation features within business tools, it can generate scripts, offer automation ideas, and help users draft step-by-step processes for automation that can be implemented manually or through third-party integrations.
4. Data Security and Privacy
   • Copilot: Being part of the Microsoft 365 suite, Copilot adheres to enterprise-grade security, compliance, and privacy measures, making it a safer choice for businesses handling sensitive information within the Microsoft ecosystem.
   • ChatGPT-4: OpenAI offers enterprise-level solutions with enhanced security features, but data entered into ChatGPT may require careful handling to ensure compliance with an organization’s data privacy policies.
5. Customization and Learning
   • Copilot: Copilot learns and adapts based on the user’s work patterns within Microsoft 365, offering increasingly personalized suggestions over time.
   • ChatGPT-4: ChatGPT can be fine-tuned for specific use cases, but it does not have direct access to company-specific data unless integrated with APIs or connected via custom solutions.

Which One is Better?

The choice between Copilot and ChatGPT-4 depends on the business’s existing infrastructure and needs:

• If your company heavily relies on Microsoft 365 products, Copilot is the more efficient option, as it provides in-app automation and seamless workflow enhancements.
• If you need a more versatile AI tool for brainstorming, customer interactions, and creative content generation, ChatGPT-4 might be the better choice.
  Ultimately, many businesses find value in using both AI tools in complementary ways—leveraging Copilot for operational tasks within Microsoft applications and ChatGPT-4 for broader, creative, and conversational AI needs.

Aren’t we blessed to be doing what we’re doing at this time? If this material is of interest to you, please write to [email protected] or visit LinkedIn/in/SharonScottWilson and let us know. Plus, we’d love it if you would share your thoughts and ideas for topics you’d like Resort Trades to cover.

Sharon Scott Wilson is Publisher of Resort Trades magazine. Connect on linkedin.com/in/sharonscottwilson. Subscribe to Resort Trades Weekly — https://resorttrades.com/emagazine/.