Chapel Hill, N.C. — Katie O’Brien moved to California for college, hoping to learn about culture. Raised in her bubble of Chapel Hill, North Carolina, she headed to the University of California Santa Barbara (UCSB) to study anthropology and geology. 

 

After college, she tried out office jobs. “I realized I hated that,” said O’Brien, 27. “I didn't love sitting and doing the same thing every single day.”

 

When O’Brien moved back to North Carolina, she discovered the easiest job to get on a whim was hosting in a restaurant. City Kitchen in Chapel Hill hired her on the spot. 

 

“I figured ‘let me just get a host job while I figure out what I'm doing,’” she said. “My goal was to eventually go back to school.” 

 

Her manager could see she was eager to learn and asked if she would be interested in wine.

 

“I never thought of that as a career for myself,” said O’Brien.

 

O’Brien quickly worked her way up from host to a server, and then to catering, where she became the banquet-lead.

 

“I feel like I get bored pretty easily and I love to train people, so I always find myself in those roles, even if I'm not getting paid to do it,” she said.  “They would always put the new people with me serving.”

 

That led her to bartending. 

 

“That was my real start in the service industry and I feel like I got a real taste of what everything could be like, career wise and management,” said O’Brien.

 

Then the unexpected happened: COVID-19. City Kitchen closed permanently. Like many people, O’Brien went through a career identity crisis.

 

“I thought ‘What the hell do I do? Do I go to grad school? What am I doing? Do I work in more restaurants?,’” O’Brien wondered.

 

She then found herself working two part-time bartending jobs at Chapel Hill restaurant Market and Moss and Durham restaurant Mateo, struggling to make pre-COVID wages.

 

She spent her free time applying to an online graduate program and scrolling through the job site Indeed just to see what was out there. It was there she found the bar manager position listing for Il Palio, a four-Diamond rated Italian restaurant inside of Chapel Hill’s Siena Hotel. 

 

“I was in the middle of applying to a graduate program for a position like this,” she said. “ A lot of people in hospitality need to get into these positions.”

 

Il Palio is independently owned, but is part of Marriott’s Autograph Collection,  a unique assortment of boutique hotels across the country. It’s designed after the neighborhood in Siena, Italy. Il Palio serves very authentic Italian food, with all the pastas and desserts made in house and wine from each region in Italy.

 

“The mission of the whole Siena is just to be that escape for locals or parents of UNC students, which is our primary demographic, and offer them great hospitality,” she said. “We don't have a pool or a spa or anything, but we have event space that gets us good revenue and then the restaurant and bar.”

 

Her bosses say she’s risen to the new challenge.

 

“She’s really calm under pressure. We’ve had a lot of boys behind the bar so it’s nice to have female energy—ya know, she cleans up after herself,” said Keyarra Wood, the head host and floor manager for holidays and special events.

 

O’Brien still decided to go ahead with grad school, and is working on a Master’s of Science in Parks, Recreation, Tourism and Sport Management at North Carolina State University.

 

“It’s important for her to have a creative outlet and have goals to accomplish,” said Kyle Clark, sous chef at Il Palio. “Balancing school and work is challenging for everyone—having a lot of deadlines to keep up with—but she does a great job. I think she’s the best one in the building for the position and she holds it down.” 

 

“It works out really well, because you need a workplace in your field that you want to be in in my grad school program to get information from. For my business plan project right now, if I wasn't working at Siena, I would have to call up a business and ask them their needs and make my whole project from them,“ said O’Brien.

 

While balancing full-time work and school can be extremely challenging, she thinks it will be worth it.

 

“On days where I'm not exhausted from the night before, I do some readings, but I generally dedicate my days off to my school,” said O’Brien.

 

She hopes that with this graduate degree she will have more business and marketing skills that will help her obtain a full-time beverage directing job—one where she doesn’t also have to be behind a bar. The pandemic’s staffing shortage has made that a necessity for now. 

 

“I wouldn't say bartending five nights out of the week and being beverage director, too, is my end goal,” she said. “I would love to have a little bit more balance between the two. But working for Marriott, whether it be abroad in Europe somewhere working with our wine program or even their food program—that is the dream.”