ZZZ - GMG - VEGAS INC 2011-2014

F or Sarah Johnson, 2014 really began in 2012. "In 2012," she recalls, "I really started looking ahead in my career as far as development in food and beverage here at Mandalay Bay – and across the city, honestly. We said, 'We really need to step it up in regards to beer and our beer IQ in town.'" In 2013, Johnson continues, she started "really laying the foundation. I sold to executive leadership, and even corporate leadership, the importance of building a really strong beer program. And so 2014 is going to be all about executing." What that will entail will be neither simple nor necessarily easy, Johnson explains. "It's going to involve a lot of education for our staff, and even of our guests. It's about developing and enriching our current beer-centric concepts, but also just really elevating the status of beer across the board, getting people to think more about it, be more aware of it, building it into fine-dining menus." Which beer style will she focus her efforts on? "All of them," she answers characteristically. "One of the biggest challenges I face is that people think beer is a label, it's a brand. They don't necessarily even think of beer in regards to styles. So it's really going to be a big shift in the way we think." During the coming months, part of Johnson's mission will be to elevate beer to an equal status of wine on fi ne dining menus, where flavor and style outrank the brand name. Service staffers will be instructed on how to approach beer using fl avor descriptors and narrative stories to entice guests to try something new. Her goal is to create a culture where the collective beer knowledge matches the level of hospitality, so that Mandalay Bay and eventually all of Las Vegas can host large- scale, world-class beer events. To help push that effort forward, Johnson recently founded the Las Vegas chapter of Barley 's Angels, a global organization that helps women gain access to and information about great beer. Participation in the program has increased tenfold in the five months since the first meeting, and expectations for its success – like Johnson's own – are high. — By Howard Riell C hicago native Jennifer Wyatt moved to Southern Nevada in 1996, and – armed with a bachelor's degree in fi nance from Illinois State University – took a position as an accounting manager with a private contractor for the Department of Defense. "We hired firefighters, and a colleague – who wondered why I was working a desk job – told me the Clark County Fire Department was recruiting. I did some research, fell in love with it and took the plunge," said Wyatt, who has been a fi refi ghter for 12 years, and also holds certifi cation as a paramedic and a fi re engineer, her current status. This year, Wyatt has shifted her focus from her active duties to representing her fellow fi refi ghters as the newly elected second vice president in the Clark County Firefighters Local 1908, established in 1969 to address the safety and health concerns of local fi refi ghters while also serving the needs of local residents. Wyatt will utilize her comprehensive knowledge of fi refi ghting, as well as her skills as an emergency medical technician and her passion for helping others to provide elevated new levels of care for folks in Southern Nevada. This includes the development and oversight of a new Community Paramedic Program, which is being rolled out in multiple cities across the country and is expected to provide a new level of access to non-emergency medical care utilizing the skills and resources of the paramedic program. "This is a major push in the nation," said Wyatt, who is one of about 20 women in a department of some 650 fi refi ghters. "Sometimes people with limited medical resources end up calling 9-1-1 and going to the ER for non-emergency problems such as a cold and cough, or questions about medications. The Community Paramedic Program will try and close the gap and reduce costs to the health care system by providing community members access to trained paramedics with a dedicated phone number outside the emergency 9-1-1 system." Besides overseeing the local implementation of this program, Wyatt will also leverage her union position to develop new contacts in the political arena in order to educate lawmakers regarding concerns that affect not only the safety and well being of fi refi ghters, but of the community as a whole. — By Danielle Birkin JENNIFER WYATT Second Vice President Clark County Firefi ghters Local 1908 SARAH JOHNSON Director of Food and Beverage Mandalay Bay WOMEN TO WATCH 2014 4A _WomenToWatch_020314.indd 4 1/30/14 2:17 PM

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