All About The Experience & Giving Back

Loving where you live and giving back is constant in my conversations with leaders throughout the Woodlands Community. I am honored to share an excerpt from my conversation with Janine Jones , Director of Events for the Woodlands Hospitality Group.

Haley: Having been in the PR and business development industries for over 20 years, you are a master at building relationships. You have done such an outstanding job in the community for so many of us since you moved here from Argentina. Tell us just a little bit about some of your history and what you've done just to help everybody get to know you on a personal level.

Janine: I have always worked in hospitality, Four Seasons, Hotel, PR, agencies, you name it. I always love to travel, and one of my biggest things was always to meet and connect people. When I moved to the Woodlands in 2006, my husband got a job right away, and we moved with our 4 children. It was challenging at the beginning to get into a community where you don't know anyone— if you'll ever be able to work because you have no connections and have four kids to raise. So, thankfully, I think we landed in the best community we could have chosen to start our life here in the US. The Woodlands has literally been the best place to start –? I started working with the convention in Visitors Bureau, helping them with receiving journalists that were coming to The Woodlands that needed to promote The Woodlands and they needed someone who spoke Spanish. After that, I started meeting travel agents, and then I organized a big event for them, and that led to working for one restaurant group for ten years. Currently, I'm working with Black Forest Ventures and the Woodlands Hospitality Group.

"I get to do what I love every single day, which is a blessing. And I think, again, this is the best place to be able to do that." - Janine Jones

Haley: The way you lead this community and all of the events and the public relations that you do so fearlessly – that's exactly what you just described when you first moved here. You just jumped right in, and you do that all the time. Let's kick off our conversation. Tell us a little bit about Tris, Black Walnut, and the Kitchen restaurants and how woven into our community are they as an organization? Give us a little bit of background.

Janine: I get the pleasure of working for three different concepts in our group: the fast casual dining, which would be Kitchen and Black Walnut. Black Walnut has some beautiful private rooms, so I got to develop the concept of these private rooms, selling off sites that we can go to people's homes and put together a beautiful event for them and a beautiful experience for a corporate party, a holiday party, an engagement, a rehearsal dinner. Not many people know that Black Walnut is a restaurant that can do this, so we have the staff for that. We bring all the things you need - and take care of everything. The beautiful part of this place is that I've been able to host a lot of the networking groups of our community that are always looking for places to meet and have a hard time finding places. We have rooms booked almost every day with these groups. We do lots of rehearsal dinners, bridal, showers. It's just turned into a hot spot to come and have a fun event in a great location, great parking, et cetera.

We also get to build and provide beautiful experiences, even if it's a two person anniversary dinner date, a birthday, a special occasion, we thrive in trying to make people happy, and that can also be related to the corporate world. I make executive assistants look good in front of their bosses when we fulfill their events and they leave and express their appreciation for us and our staff. It can go from very small, important occasion that you're celebrating to a big corporate celebration occasion.

Our chef is extraordinary - the people they'll remember the meal, but they really remember how you made them feel at the experience.

Haley: It is all about the experience and giving back –? The Woodlands hospitality group have done such a great job. In addition to just providing really amazing meals and on the food side, what else is their mission? As far as the goal?

Janine: One of the main reasons that I joined this company was because they are strong believers of giving back to our community – I could not work for a restaurant group or a company that doesn't give back. If you don't give back in this community, you're definitely not in the right place.

That was one of the first things I learned when I moved to The Woodlands without even really having a full time job. We have a connection to Restaurant Week in addition to our community events. Our community gets the opportunity to experience our service and in turn we gain new and loyal fans – They’re hooked and can't not come back.?

Haley: I think it's one of the things that gives The Woodlands the feel of even though we are growing quite large, we still have that small hometown feel. The connection amongst all the residents as well as the is really amazing.

Janine: Even in Houston, people compare our fundraising efforts to what they do in Houston, and we're like the talk of the town sometimes with what is raised in our big school, charity galas for nonprofits. Everyone that hosts a fundraiser in this community has success because we are such a giving community.

Haley: what do you do that really furthers your own personal mission within the community in regards to helping?

Janine:? Two years ago, I was invited to join the Board of New Danville, which you belong to as well. It's an amazing nonprofit that helps adults with development disabilities in Conroe, TX. The day I toured that facility, I was in awe of what they do, of what we do, and couldn't think of a better nonprofit to be a part of an honor, to be inclined to join a board.

Women of The Woodlands, founded over 10 years ago, I am very proud of that. It's a group that we created with the goal of having women who in our community either work or support a nonprofit or own their own business and connect. We've grown something very successful, and we're very proud of it.

We shared more about Janine’s work in the Woodlands community and how that intertwines with the work she does at Black Walnut Restaurant Group. Watch the full episode on our YouTube Channel

Haley: Your value system is centered around connecting and supporting others, and you also have such a big heart, and when you make that connection with others, you really, truly care, and you want to help them in whatever their mission might be, and you do that so plentifully.?

In our Women of The Woodlands group, we talk a lot about sharing our gratitude and we talk about the successes, but there's also hard things going on in life – stresses related to economics and what's going on in the world and things that might be going on with our children. When we have a connection with others and when we really show up to support one another, that's what makes life possible.

To really keep going and get through the hard times, then we can celebrate the wins.?

Thank you to Janine for joining me on the latest episode of Wake Up! With Haley. Let me remind you to Rise, Shine,? Live Aligned. Our next episode will be on Tuesday, September 6, at 7:30am.?