Peggy Berg

Name: Peggy Berg Picture of Faculty/Staff Member
Alumni Of:
  • School of Public Policy
Degree(s):
  • M.S. PUBP 2011
Current Job: Director, Castell Project, Inc.
Biography:

Peggy Berg, SPP Masters graduate Class of 2011, recommends studying at Georgia Tech when launching a new stage in life.

I’m one of those students who came to Georgia Tech to facilitate a career change. I’d rebooted my career twice. But, to continue to contribute and remain challenged, it was once again time for a change. My first career in consulting with a public accounting firm was very structured and taught me how to conduct business and how to manage people. It culminated in my election as the first female employee to reach partnership in that international firm. While proud of attaining partnership, it was impossible for me to stay in the firm’s structure. I rebooted my career – quit my job - to find a better way to live life.

For my second career, I founded and built a consulting firm working in the same industry. At the same time, I started a family. Owning a business and raising a family bring different challenges, different stresses and different rewards than working as an unattached employee. Everyone in The Highland Group, Hotel Investment Advisors, Inc. prided themselves on delivering the highest quality advisory services and prioritized building their families at the same time.

Consulting, whether with the national firm or our boutique firm, provided a good paycheck. But, to develop assets for my family, I needed to reboot. I bought under-performing hotels with my husband, renovated them, repositioned them in the marketplace, operated them and ultimately sold them. The hotels taught me about balance sheets, financing small businesses, taking risk, surviving down markets and reaping the benefits of strong markets. I learned to provide a feeling of security for employees, even in difficult times. While making good money consulting, and assuring that I had resources with the hotels, my work became less interesting. To make a change, it had to be impossible to remain in my very comfortable position. So, I sold the Highland Group to my partner, with a buy out over several years.

Since the same person in the same situation will do the same thing, making a change required new ideas, new skills, and new information. For me Georgia Tech’s School of Public Policy was challenging, stimulating, broadly educational, and mind-opening. It is a place where people from widely different academic backgrounds collaborate to bring new ideas and better solutions to light. Getting a master’s degree at the School of Public Policy was a great experience. It helped me understand the world around me, government function, the constraints and opportunities in our complex society, and the exciting world emerging with this generation of students.

I founded a non-profit corporation called the Castell Project, Inc. I am using the skills from Georgia Tech and the relationships and knowledge-base from my previous careers to move women into leadership in the hospitality industry.