Women have long been the backbone of the hospitality industry, bringing creativity, resilience, and leadership to roles across lodging and restaurants. From front-of-house managers to executive chefs and hotel CEOs, women are not only shaping guest experiences but also redefining what leadership looks like in a traditionally male-dominated field.

In the hospitality industry in Washington state, there are 170,299 women working, about 51% of the workforce in the last year, according to data the Washington Hospitality Association collects.

In the restaurant industry, 29.1% of all leadership roles are occupied by women. In entry-level positions, 58.5% of the workforce are women.

The numbers seem to be closer to equal in the lodging industry, where 41.6% of leadership positions are occupied by women. In the entry level positions, 30.9% are women.

Women face certain challenges in any industry, including hospitality, and we talked to two leaders to learn from their perspectives.

Tiffany Turner is the CEO and co-founder of Adrift Hospitality, which operates seven lodging properties in southwest Washington and northwest Oregon. She said she and her husband opened their first property about 20 years ago.

At the time, she had been an elementary school teacher, and he ran an insurance agency.

“When we first started, we were both 24,” she said. “I walked into the bank to try to get our first loan—pregnant—and I pretty much got laughed out of the bank. It took me going back with my husband, and together we were able to secure that loan. It really felt like if he had first walked in instead of me, the experience would have been different from the beginning.”

That inn became the Inn at Discovery Coast in Long Beach, Wash.

She recognizes that her experience is different because her businesses are in rural communities, but she has noticed several challenges over the years, most notably, who folks think is running the business. As CEO, Turner runs the company. Her husband is the Chief Development Officer, and he manages design and construction. Most people just make the assumption that he runs things and that she picks out the furniture.

“One of my closest friends was meeting with somebody who works in local government, and he argued with her about saying that my husband was the one that did all the work for the business. She got so mad because it’s sexism in action,” she said. “My husband is the first one to say that I’m the one in charge, and that it is really crazy that we still run into these assumptions in our community and in the industry.”

Carla Barajas owns and operates three Azteca Restaurants and a Tecate Grill in Eastern Washington and North Idaho.

She started in the industry when she was nine years old, bussing tables in her grandparents’ restaurant in Seattle.

“It was fun. It didn’t feel like work. I got extra spending money, and it was awesome,” she said.

Barajas said she caught the restaurant bug at 14 when she started serving tables. She started at Azteca at the age of 18 and it carried her through college where she earned a degree in political science. She met her husband at Azteca, and they started a family.

“When I graduated from college, they offered me a managerial position,” she said. So, I was like, ‘Well, how much do they make? I have a college degree, and I need to make money.’”

As a server and a manager, she noticed a lot of challenges she had to overcome.

“You had to work harder. Sometimes you had to work longer hours. Sometimes they never took you seriously” she said. “I remember one time a partner’s wife stopped me when we were slammed. She said, ‘You need to go put some lipstick on.’ We couldn’t wear slacks back then. You had to wear skirts or dresses. Isn’t that crazy?”

Barajas also said she once learned she was making less money than her male counterparts. She kicked and screamed a little and pointed out that her pay should be based on her numbers—just like everyone else.

Both Turner and Barajas said they worked hard to overcome some of these challenges. In Barajas’ case, she said her education went a long way when getting some of her colleagues to take her seriously.

For Turner, she likes to “surround myself with other really strong, badass women who help lift each other up.” And the look of her team now reflects that.

“The leaders in our company are majority female. We haven’t built an all-women team intentionally. We have male leaders, but we’re proving that women can do the work and can sometimes do it better. As I’ve gotten older and a little bit more influential, I’m making sure that I’m lifting up as many young female voices as I can.”

In fact, Turner, who serves as the chair of the Washington Hospitality Association executive board, got involved with the organization because she noticed a disparity.

She primarily joined the association because of Retro, but one day she received an email about a panel discussion.

“The hospitality association was putting on a panel and it was all white dudes,” she said.

She was impressed that when she reached out to the leadership of the association about how that felt, they didn’t view it as a complaint, but as an opportunity to do better.

“And it was great because guess what happened? Anthony [Anton] called me and asked me to be on the board.”

Barajas has noticed changes within the industry, too.

“There is so much more opportunity for women nowadays than there were back then,” Barajas said. “For the longest time I was the only female general manager, and we had 26 locations.”

Both of these women have put in the work in hospitality. And they both recognize there is more to do.

Turner said, “It’s changing slowly, but for the type of industry we are and the number of women at the bottom of the ladder, we’ve got a lot of work to do to build a better pipeline for them to make it to the top.”

The data cited in this story was curated by the Washington Hospitality Association from various public records and subscription services. As a membership benefit, association members have access to our local wage reports and restaurant and hotel industry snapshots. Custom data reports can also be requested by members by emailing