Michelle Stoddart always bets on herself. Born and raised in Savanna-la-mar, Jamaica, she has propelled herself through an unlikely career. She started as a counter-clerk at National Commercial Bank in Jamaica and is today the vice president of community development for Resorts World Casino in New York City, where she’s the first minority to hold the post of director.
Her secret? Following her passion, she says.
“I need to find passion and drive for whatever is in front of me,” Stoddart explains. “I’m that person who is extremely flexible and driven by the words ‘get it done.’” She landed a dream job at the illustrious Essence magazine straight out of Baruch College where she pursued a bachelor’s degree in English with a minor in journalism. Afterward, she did marketing work for a handful of firms before working another magazine job at Everybody’s Magazine, a staple outlet for the Caribbean diaspora. Here Stoddart cemented herself as a do-it-all, never say no, worker, touching everything from editorial, writing, producing concerts and plays, and assisting in one of the magazine redesigns.
She traces a throughline of community through her work back to her parents. Service and community are in her DNA – both her parents were in the Kiwanis club, her mother was a girl guide commissioner, and her father was a member of United Way in Jamaica. She remembers building bus shelters and helping with food distribution after hurricanes. “I don’t want to see suffering. If I can help in any way, I will,” she explains. “If you look at all the jobs I’ve held, and all the boards I’m on, there’s a service component to all of them; there’s an aspect of them that is helping someone. It’s really just who I am.”
As a result, Stoddart takes immense pride in her work and accomplishments over the years. Before taking up her role at the Resorts World Casino, she was the director of marketing and tourism at the Queens Economic Development Corporation (QEDC). During her run, she spearheaded numerous successful campaigns focusing on promoting the borough of Queens to the wider America and the world.
Still, if you really want to get Michelle Stoddart gushing, ask her about the “Taste of the World” food festival. Put on by the QEDC annually, this event is a mainstay on the Queens borough’s activity calendar. The seventh edition coincided with the 2009 opening of the new Mets baseball stadium, Citi Field. Right away Stoddart had an epiphany – Citi field, before a single ball was thrown, would be the perfect venue for that year’s tasting festival. The Citi Field administration was originally reticent, unsure if a tasting event was the best use of the property. She revised a new pitch after each rejection until the administration finally caved.
The event was incredible, exceeding even Stoddart’s expectations. “I froze,” she explains, describing the size of the crowd that turned up. “It was just more dynamic; just more than I ever thought I could produce.” In just one year, with a change of venue, the turn out for “Taste of the World” skyrocketed from a modest 200 patrons to 3000 visitors cycling in and out. Stoddart pulled out all the stops – celebrity chefs, entertainment, and boisterous press coverage. The event was such a hit that Citi Field hosted it for consecutive years, even taking some of the restaurants featured on board as in-stadium concessions.
Stoddart would end up leaving the QEDC after years of incredible work. A motif of our interview is her need to be challenged. What’s more challenging than entering an industry you have no idea how it works? Stoddart had been to a casino maybe once before her interview with Resorts World Casino, she’s not sure. Yet when the casino was trying to break into the New York market to become the first casino of its scale in the five boroughs, she thought who could be better than her? “I see what you have, but I think I know what you need,” she recalls telling the interviewers. Michelle Stoddart might not have known the first thing about slots or craps, but she knew New York, and she especially knew Queens. “I didn’t look at it as going to apply for a casino position, I saw it as going to use my transferable skills to help them integrate this new industry into New York City.”
Stoddart started at the casino as the director of community development and public relations and is now the vice president of the same division. She’s Resorts World’s liaison to the people of Queens. “There’s a stigma around casinos, but it’s for us to go out there and explain that even though the industry is new to us, they’re hiring locals, and people can come in and climb, and go all the way to the top,” she notes, recalling her community pitch. Of course, it helped that an entry-level job at Resorts World paid more than double the minimum wage on the street.
Resorts World still satisfies Stoddart’s insatiable hunger for new challenges; the latitude she’s afforded has had symbiotic benefits for her and her employer. “I don’t look at any job as a box that I have to fit into. I’m the asset,” she explains. She channels all of her being into everything she does. Case in point, her mother is an artist, and the casino has afforded her a gallery to showcase local pieces from around Queens. “It’s a nod to her to say I see you, maybe I cannot produce art as beautifully as you do, but I appreciate it and I respect it.”
When asked about the challenges she faced as a Black, career-focused woman in the United States, Stoddart laughs. If she were white, she thinks she’d be further along in her career, all things being equal, and have reached even higher highs. Then she gets serious, “They’re not going to stop me. They can put up their fences, but I’m going over, around, whatever it takes to get where I want to go.”
As noted, Michelle Stoddart always bets on herself.
