Wendy Kublin is general manager for Hilton Garden Inn, where she has worked for seven years. She has an extensive background with Marriott Hotels and graduated in July from the master’s program of Schiller International University in Florida.

Tell me about your recent degree.

It makes me smile when I think about it. I feel educating myself is really important, so I decided that I should walk the line when I finished. I changed my program from business to hospitality – Dr. (Rich) Patterson at Western Kentucky University said I should. My degree is a really long thing – international hospitality and tourism management. At Western, I teach hotel operations and management in the fall and advanced lodging in the spring. I’ve been doing that for three years. I love them. … It is a really pretty close department. I have 31 students in class now.

How did you get in the hospitality industry?

It was forever ago. I went to business school for travel and tourism. After I graduated, I started at the Marriott in California and I loved it. It was Warner Center Marriott. In the old days with Marriott you got to move up to bigger properties. I went from a 400-something room property to a 1,000-room property. I believe it was 1986 when I started. I was there in California for 12 years and did all big full-service properties, then I transferred to Arizona and fell in love with that. … I transferred to Hilton in 2001 and then got married. They have been the only two brands I’ve worked for. When the management contract was up here with Hilton in 2013, Anderson Hospitality became the property management. I’m an employee for Anderson. I love my ownership. They are great to work with. … We haven’t changed much. It just made sense for Anderson (as part-owner) to manage it. It’s still a Hilton franchise.

Tell me about the renovation the hotel has planned.

I’ve been here since the hotel opened, and it’s already time for a renovation. I can’t believe it, but the hotel is really busy. (Occupancy to date is nearly 86 percent at the hotel, which has 55 employees). Last year we replaced all the beds. Now the focus is a very large $1.2 million project. We are renovating our ballrooms and our guest rooms. We are doing new paint, pictures, flooring and window coverings. Oh, and new carpet in the hallways. The carpet is going to be gone in the rooms. It’s going to be pretty. We also are doing work on the outside such as caulking and painting – things I really wasn’t all that excited about … but then I realized what that could mean in maintenance savings and I got excited about it. We have seven rooms with whirlpools and are talking about making them into executive suites. We are going to do two showrooms so that Anderson can see what they will look like. We will probably begin work in December.

Tell me about your family.

My husband, George, is an engineer for Baker Hughes, an oilfield services company. He’s usually home every two weeks. It’s hard sometimes because we don’t get to see each other a lot. So when he’s home we talk about seeing a movie or riding bikes – kind of like kid stuff for us. We want to see “Deepwater Horizon.” We have cars that we work on and travel with together. Living with us we have our nephew, who is graduating in December from WKU, and my son, who is going to school at WKU. And I’ve got both my parents here. I finally got my Mom to move here and it’s great.

Tell me about growing up.

I grew up in the Seattle and Tacoma, Wash., area. I loved growing up there. I loved school. My family was into cars and I was sort of a pep club girl. Sports wise, I ran track a little, and I’ve been working since I was like 15. I worked at my father’s car lot and at the ballpark – a Triple-A team. I was social and was taught young how to work hard. My parents were divorced, but I had lots of parents. My grandparents were like my parents sometimes. Mom worked a lot, so my grandmother took care of us a lot.

What do you do for fun?

Yoga. I do a lot of yoga at Harmony Yoga. I just love it there. I go probably four days a week. I like to be outside and I have dogs, so I do a lot for the humane society, so I like to think I’m pretty involved in the community. I love my dogs and they can’t do anything wrong. Now the boys … .