Courtney Sullivan says she enjoys promoting Greenwood, and she gets plenty of opportunities to do that in her work at the Holiday Inn Express.
Sullivan, 32, serves as sales manager and assistant general manager at the hotel, where she has worked for a year. She has spent four years overall with Chawla Enterprises, which owns the hotel.
“I like to make people happy,” she said. “That’s actually my job.”
Sullivan was born in Greenwood, the daughter of Lucille Sullivan and the late Junior Sullivan. She has one brother, Dustin Sullivan of Greenwood, and one sister, Cheryl Walker of Tupelo. Two other brothers are deceased.
After graduating from Carroll Academy in 2004, she started her first job, which was at Yianni’s restaurant. She later spent nine years employed at Best Western, ran a car lot for her uncle and also worked at a couple of loan companies.
Growing up, she was interested in a legal career, and she later earned a paralegal degree online from American Public University, completing it two years ago. She said it’s difficult to find a job as a paralegal in Greenwood because attorneys tend to keep their paralegals for long periods of time.
But she enjoys her current job, which involves a lot of work with the Greenwood Convention and Visitors Bureau in planning events for groups and negotiating rates for them.
“We work together all the time to organize things for the guests to do while they’re here,” she said. “So I actually do promote Greenwood a lot.”
She works from 7 a.m. to 3 p.m. Monday through Friday as well as some hours on weekends. Of course, the schedule changes when there’s a big community event going on.
“For Bikes, Blues and Bayous, I was here at 4:30 that morning setting up everything for them so that they could eat breakfast and leave on time to go ride the bikes,” she said.
Sometimes she might have to come in late if a co-worker has an emergency, but that’s been rare. In any case, she said, “whenever I’m needed, that’s when I’m here — because it changes.”
She hopes to keep working in the field of hospitality management or event coordinating.
Sullivan has two daughters — Preslee, 12, and Taylor, 10 — who attend Carroll Academy and a 9-year-old son, Kage, who lives in Batesville. Her boyfriend is Ray Gillon.
In her spare time, she likes to cook, shop and spend time with family and friends. Also, she enjoys decorating with recycled items. “I like to take things like scrap wood and scrap metal and make stuff out of it,” she said.
•Contact David Monroe at 581-7236 or dmonroe@gwcommonwealth.com.
