It may be 90 degrees here in Florida, but it’s a cool 65 degrees in Skagway, Alaska.
Quite a change for Orlando native and current Skagway resident Isabel Runnels.
Runnels, a 21-year-old hospitality graduate, could have gotten a job in Orlando, but wanted to see the world. “It’s funny; you’d think I could just go anywhere in Orlando and get a hotel job. But I thought, ‘Why not change the scenery?’ And it’s been great so far.”
Runnels, who focused on event management while at Valencia, was working at a Maitland printing company when she realized she wanted to try her hands at a seasonal job outside of Florida.
“I was stuck in a cubicle and, being in hospitality management, I needed to talk to people, but not about how much their print jobs would cost. So, just randomly one day, I looked up seasonal jobs. I had a few friends who worked in seasonal work – a friend who worked in Hawaii and a cousin who worked at a dude ranch in Montana,” she says. “I decided I’m going to do it.”
She applied for a number of different seasonal jobs, but was impressed by the culture of the Holland America Cruise Line team. So, on May 2, she landed in Alaska, where she works at a hotel owned by Holland America Cruise Line. She has enjoyed it so much that she plans to return to Alaska next summer.
For Runnels, it’s been a great way to explore different opportunities in the hospitality industry.
“I just felt really stuck, growing up in Orlando and working there. All my friends had moved away, either for school or after school,” she said. “I felt a little stuck in my hometown; I hadn’t traveled very much. And even though I had studied event planning and event management, I’m still very undecided about what I want to do in the hospitality field. So, I thought, ‘Why not see what I like and not be stuck in the same place?’
“Looking back, it was good to grow and expand a little bit.”
Now, as she’s wrapping up her summer in Alaska, her Alaska friends are headed to Colorado to work the ski season or going to Australia to work on cruise lines there. Runnels, on the other hand, is planning to return to Orlando to spend time with her siblings.
As for her time at Valencia College, Runnels has fond memories. On her first day of classes, she wasn’t sure where she was going, so a friendly staffer escorted her to her classroom at the Lake Nona Campus. It turned out that her guide was Valencia College President Kathleen Plinske. “She walked me all the way upstairs and to the other side of the building, even held the classroom door for me and said hello to my professor. I had no idea who she was,” she says. “But it was a very positive experience for my first day considering I was so nervous!”
At Valencia, she found support in many ways – especially after her mother was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in 2023.
“Everyone was willing to help,” she says. “My mom was going to chemo a lot, and there were so many surgeries and everything in between, and (I turned in) a lot of late assignments, with everything going on. But everyone was so flexible. I never had an issue with any of my professors. Everyone understood.
“My convention services professor, Lisa Vining, let me miss a few classes and come in during her office hours to make up the work. It was really nice to be able to work with such great people.”
The atmosphere at Valencia was both casual and nurturing, says Runnels. And it left an impression.
“There was always someone helping me. Everyone was very personable,” she says. “And I felt like you got one-on-one relationships with the professors.”
— Linda Shrieves