Shatterproof, a nationwide nonprofit group and a frontrunner in bettering the best way the healthcare system addresses and treats substance use issues, honored Amanda Hite, president, STR, a CoStar Group firm, with the 2025 Shatterproof Hospitality Hero Award. Hite is acknowledged for her braveness and dedication towards elevating consciousness of substance use dysfunction and ending dependancy stigma. Because the seventh recipient however first lady to win, Hite units new requirements at her firm and inside the trade.
Senior executives throughout the resort trade united throughout NorthStar Journey Group’s annual Americas Lodging Funding Summit (ALIS) in Los Angeles to commend Hite on her accomplishments. Greater than 70 hospitality firms raised $2.1 million through the occasion to advance Shatterproof’s necessary work led by Founder and CEO, Gary Mendell, a former hotelier (chairman and co-founder of HEI Accommodations and Resorts), who misplaced his son Brian to dependancy in 2011.
“I’m honored to obtain this award, however extra importantly, to assist increase vital help for Shatterproof and the transformational work they’re doing,” stated Hite. “STR is proud to collaborate with Shatterproof as they prepared the ground in advocating for folks with substance use dysfunction, their households and the communities this illness impacts.”
Following the reception, Hite joined different trade leaders together with Geoff Ballotti, president and CEO of Wyndham Accommodations & Resorts; Paul Daly, International Head of Franchise & Proprietor Relations at Hyatt; Julienne Smith, Chief Growth Officer at IHG Accommodations & Resorts; and Shatterproof’s Gary Mendell for a panel dialogue to additional outline subsequent steps for the trade. The dialog was transferring and provoking, with every member of the dais sharing their private connection to the mission. The session culminated with Hite saying an annual partnership with Shatterproof, Ballotti saying that Shatterproof might be named a featured charity on the 2025 Wyndham International Convention, Daly committing to proceed Hyatt’s efforts to make a secure atmosphere for colleagues and company recovering from dependancy and Smith saying a rollout out of Shatterproof’s Simply 5 instructional platform later this yr. To shut the panel, Smith additionally introduced a private donation, an additional testomony to her dedication to affect.
Based on the Substance Abuse and Psychological Well being Service Administration (SAMHSA), workers of eating places and resorts (the 2 main branches of the hospitality trade) have the very best charges of substance use out of the complete American workforce. A substance use dysfunction doesn’t simply have an effect on workers themselves and their households; companies lose billions of {dollars} every yr within the type of increased well being care prices, absenteeism and presenteeism (when workers are at work, however not absolutely productive).
Since 2016, the hospitality trade has raised greater than $9.6 million for Shatterproof throughout occasions at ALIS, and this yr lots of the trade’s main hospitality manufacturers pledged to onboard Shatterproof’s worker schooling program Simply 5 to additional help their workers. Hospitality companions are additionally serving to to convey the dialog into the sunshine, by publicly sponsoring Shatterproof’s annual Walks to Finish Dependancy Stigma, the biggest occasion sequence for substance use dysfunction within the nation.
“I proceed to be impressed by the unimaginable help of the hospitality trade,” stated Mendell. “Substance use dysfunction is a largely preventable illness, and it’s by means of the beneficiant help and consciousness efforts of the hospitality trade that we can cut back stigma and improve the variety of coverage modifications and remedy sources to finish this disaster. They’re the primary trade that has actually moved the needle as an trade with reference to Shatterproof. Every year they get extra concerned and are going past sponsoring the occasion—however are working to teach and supply sources to their workers, clients and communities.”
The 2025 Shatterproof Hospitality Heroes Committee contains James Burba and Jeff Higley, Burba Lodge Community; Paul Whetsell, CapStar Lodge Firm; Clark Hanrattie, Anthony Rutledge, and Greg Mendell, HEI Accommodations & Resorts; Chris Nassetta, Hilton Accommodations and Resorts; Dan Lesser, LW Hospitality Advisors; Invoice Reynolds, Marcus Accommodations; Joel Eisemann, Noble Funding Group; Mark Woodworth, Woodworth Core Group; Robert Alter, Seaview Buyers; Stacy Silver, Silver Hospitality Group; Gary Mendell, Shatterproof; Thomas Corcoran, TCOR Lodge Companions; Patrick Campbell, Tim Hodes and Merrick Kleeman, Wheelock Road Capital; and Geoff Ballotti, Wyndham Accommodations and Resorts.