Catering Sales Manager has international experience, fondness for people and challenges
[Cedar Rapids, Iowa]– With its opening day still months away, the pace of activity is picking up at The Hotel at Kirkwood Center. The first hotel with a focused educational mission in the upper Midwest is on track to open in the summer of 2010. In anticipation of the coming guests and events, Kirkwood Community College has hired Jennifer Zahradnik as the hotel’s Catering Sales Manager.Zahradnik is in charge of event planning, facilitating customer needs and arranging food and beverage service for meetings and events at the hotel. The facility is expected to host many business and social events using new hotel meeting spaces, plus the existing conference facilities already built and attached to the hotel under construction. She began her duties on Jan. 11.
Zahradnik comes to Kirkwood from StoneRiver, Inc. (formerly Fiserv), where she worked in corporate marketing, communications and training. Her experience includes training, multi-level marketing support, and extensive event planning at several top resorts throughout North America. Zahradnik coordinated conference activities that often included many hundreds of participants, in locations from Las Vegas and Tucson to the U.S. Virgin Islands.
Hotel Manager Lee Belfield cited Zahradnik’s “great experiences with first-class venues” in adding her to the developing team at the Kirkwood facility.
“Jennifer brings a great personal ‘tool kit’ to our group, given her wide scope of professional and personal experience. She is a classic quick study and will soon be a well-known and trusted partner for our many events and conference clients in the corridor. We know her enthusiasm for life and top-level manner will serve us all well,” Belfield said.
Zahradnik joins a growing professional staff setting up services at The Hotel at Kirkwood Center. These staff members will also provide educational experiences for Kirkwood’s students in five Hospitality Arts programs. The Hotel at Kirkwood Center will offer full restaurant service plus food and beverage options for conferences, meetings and social functions.
More information on The Hotel at Kirkwood Center is available on the college Web site: