Wendy Lisogar-Cocchia was four years old when her father opened the Century Plaza Hotel on Burrard Street in 1971.
“I grew up in the hotel,” Lisogar-Cocchia said. “I did literally every job. I loved painting – I hated housekeeping.”
She’s never left. Today she’s in charge of not only the hotel but also a chain of nine spas and a skin-care distribution business.
“I’ve been running the hotel since I was 21, for 30 years, and that’s just surreal,” she told Business in Vancouver during an interview in her white-on-white office on the second floor of the Century Plaza.
Building a hotel was a dream of her father, Roy Lisogar, who grew up on the Prairies, the son of Ukrainian immigrants. As a young man he built houses, motels and commercial buildings in Hinton and Vegreville, Alberta.
He was something of an impresario: he ran a touring rodeo, and he met Lisogar-Cocchia’s mother, Lorrie, when he hired the East Vancouver figure skater for his ice show.
At 21, Lisogar-Cocchia had just finished her undergraduate degree at the University of British Columbia, was working in the accounting department at the Century Plaza and was about to go to Cornell University to pursue a master’s degree in hotel management.
Then her father had a serious stroke. Her mother concentrated on taking care of her father. Her older sister had just had a baby, so management of the hotel fell to Lisogar-Cocchia, derailing her plans for graduate school.
“The hotel was fairly new back then, and I had to make sure it broke even,” she said. “It was a shock to all that he fell ill, and I was the one who stepped in.”
Working with an all-male team of managers at the time, Lisogar-Cocchia said she didn’t “have a lot of runway” to fail at a time when the hotel was still fairly new and struggling at times to break even. She believes the work ethic her parents instilled in her helped her weather the transition.
“When they see you working 12-, 14-hour days, truly caring, stepping into the dishwasher’s position if you have to … it teaches you very early on to be a good leader by motivating and ensuring you build bridges,” she said.
She also had support from a young man then working as the hotel’s night manager, who put aside his plans of going to law school to help her. They later married; 30 years later, Sergio Cocchia still works with Lisogar-Cocchia at the hotel. He handles the legal and accounting end of the business while she focuses on building the business, sales and marketing.
“People always say, ‘Oh my God, you’ve worked together for 30 years and [have been] married for 28 years – don’t you guys drive each other crazy?’” Lisogar-Cocchia said. “[He’s] my partner – in life and business.”
Lisogar-Cocchia was eager to expand the business in her own direction and started her first spa in a space adjacent to the hotel in 1998. She expanded to the Fairmont Hotel at the Vancouver International Airport, then opened several more spas in high-profile locations: inside the airport, at the Hotel Vancouver and the River Rock Casino hotel.
“My dad was an amazing entrepreneur, and this [hotel] is his baby,” she said, “but I wanted my own baby.”
A downturn in the dollar in the late 1990s opened up another opportunity. Lisogar-Cocchia had called one of her distributors to let him know her business could no longer afford his imported skin-care products. He suggested she become the distributor for Canada.
Operating in tourism and import and distribution requires being flexible and staying on top of changing trends and currency fluctuations.
“Nobody knows exactly where the dollar’s going to be,” she said. “We’ve changed our marketing plan. We’re concentrating on our Canadian lines for export to global markets, as well as [determining] what other lines are made in Canada that would be interested in us distributing them, and importing products that we can also distribute in America.
“You have to keep good metrics, be constructively critical and be the first one to say, ‘This didn’t work.’ You have to keep on the financials daily.”
Lisogar-Cocchia throws herself into any project she takes on, said Janet Austin, CEO of YWCA Metro Vancouver. Austin first worked with Lisogar-Cocchia when the two served on the board of the Greater Vancouver Board of Trade.
“You don’t mind working hard when you’re working with Wendy because she makes it fun,” Austin said. “She has just got an incredible work ethic.”
Charitable goal
Lisogar-Cocchia’s next project is personal. Her autism charity, Pacific Autism Family Foundation, has raised $31 million for a proposed centre of excellence in Richmond, which will open in September. Lisogar-Cocchia’s son has autism and she has been active in advocacy and fundraising for families living with the disorder.
“Our charity is not about delivering services because there’s a tremendous amount of organizations that are already doing that, but it’s about building capacity,” she said.
“The further you get out of Vancouver, the more difficult it is to find specialists and expert advice and assistance.”
The centre will be a source of information for families, a vocational training facility and an educational hub for researchers and therapists. Lisogar-Cocchia also plans to open smaller “spoke” centres across British Columbia, with three planned for this year and five the next year.
Lisogar-Cocchia says she’s working “double time” on the ambitious project, which she’s approaching with the same philosophy she’s brought to her other ventures.
“Failure’s just not an option,” she said. “You just have to keep your eye on the prize and keep working until you’ve achieved what you must achieve.”
@jenstden
