Executive Profile
Name: Toby Word
Title: Sales Manager
Organization: Chesapeake Convention and Visitors Bureau
Location: Chesapeake, Virginia
Birthplace: Queens, New York
Education: Bachelor of Fine Arts in Dance, S.U.N.Y. Purchase, 1990
Career History:
• Performing artist (professional modern dancer), 1986–1996
• Account executive, Yellow Pages Publishing, 1994–1997
• Account executive, JWG Associates, Recruitment Advertising Agency, 1997–2000
• Media sales executive, Pilot Media Companies, 2001–2016
• Sales manager, Chesapeake Convention and Visitors Bureau, 2016–present
Toby Word credits being a creative thinker for her success as sales manager at the Chesapeake Convention and Visitors Bureau. But her creativity was part of her life long before she was in the hospitality industry.
Word grew up in Queens, New York, where she attended Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music and Art and Performing Arts, better known to many as the high school in the 1980 movie “Fame,” where she focused on modern dance.
“I’ve had an interesting journey towards the hospitality and tourism industry — this is actually my third career,” she said. “I have a background in the performing arts and was a professional modern dancer for many years. I was a dance major in college and got a fine arts degree, and then I had the opportunity to dance with different companies in the United States and in Europe.”
In 1994, Word returned to the U.S. and switched gears, taking a sales job with the Yellow Pages selling advertising.
“I sold advertising with a couple of different companies and then worked for an advertising agency,” she said. “I worked as a media sales executive for the local newspaper, which evolved into a media company, and that evolved into online and social media advertising.”
Word’s focus was the recruitment advertising category, working on campaigns run by human resources professionals who wanted to attract potential hires. She ran ads in the newspaper then online to help companies recruit staff. That eventually evolved into selling booth packages to companies that would attend job fairs to find new applicants. It was around that time that Word once again felt she needed a shift.
“The newspaper industry in 2016 was changing pretty quickly — the whole media landscape was — and I just started to think about how much I loved Chesapeake,” she said. “I made it my home a little more than 20 years ago, and it is a beautiful city.”
Word initially made the move to join her family. Her grandparents had moved to the area, followed by her parents then her brother and his family. But, as it turns out, the area was her family’s ancestral home, too — one of her dad’s relatives, who was born in the 1800s, was an abolitionist who started a local newspaper.
“My dad used to tell me that we have ‘ties to the Tidewater,’ which is what we call the many waterways in coastal Virginia,” she said. “My family ties run deep in this area.”
Word has been working as the sales manager at the Chesapeake Convention and Visitors Bureau for nearly a decade now and loves that every day in the office is a little different. She does group sales for leisure and hobby groups, faith-based travel, fraternities, sororities and military reunions.
“I do a little bit of several things in my sales role,” she said. “With my dance career, I didn’t know that tourism and hospitality was a whole industry, but, as I think about it, I feel like my foundation in the performing arts has given me a unique perspective on sales, especially in the hospitality and tourism industry. There are a lot of things that translate well in this career: being able to collaborate with people, build strong connections and adapt to different audiences. As I experienced those things in meeting and event sales, I thought, ‘I’m very accustomed to this.’”
Word loves the challenges she encounters in selling Chesapeake — and in finding personalized, creative solutions to her clients’ needs. She especially loves connecting people and helping them find the perfect venue for their events.
“People can meet anywhere — really, one hotel ballroom isn’t necessarily all that different from any other hotel ballroom,” she said. “What excites me about my job is that I’m selling my destination as the experience they can have in Chesapeake. I look for the things here that are special because I love the city so much, and we have so many really interesting ways to enjoy it.”
