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Photo by MSM DesignZ Photography
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Kristene Kershaw, a New Rochelle resident, loved working in restaurants—as a waitress, as a bar manager, as a general manager. But, after the birth of her third child, she knew she had to find another career. “Unless I opened my own restaurant, I wasn’t going anywhere,” she says. She certainly seems to be going places at Regus, a global provider of executive suites and meeting rooms, selling and managing commercial office space.
Somehow, Kershaw convinced Jan Peter, Regus’s area director, that her restaurant experience gave her the people skills and leadership skills necessary to turn around the company’s struggling Tarrytown offices; occupancy was then just 70 percent. She was right. In less than seven months under her stewardship, a survey reveals customer satisfaction shot up to 100 percent, and occupancy rates hit 88 percent. “I make sure clients come in and stay in,” she says. But don’t just take her word for it: Her retention rate in March was 100 percent, and she closes deals with 80 percent of walk-in clients on the spot. It is, therefore, no surprise that, when Peter needed a sales manager for Regus’s newest Westchester location, White Plains (opening in July), he called on Kershaw to head the operation. “She has what we need to be successful,” he says.
—PG
