HeyVar team
Alicia
CEO & Founder
I’ve spent most of my career somewhere between hospitality, people, and technology. I started in hospitality operations in the US, eventually running large airport locations where you learn very quickly what makes a team hold together when the pressure is on. That’s where I found my passion for helping people find the roles where they can really thrive and belong.
From there, I moved into recruiting, people and culture, startups, and technology in Europe. I’ve always been curious about people: their stories, what shapes them, how they work together, and why some teams click while others slowly fall apart.
After more than a decade of seeing the same problems come up again and again, I started asking a different question: why do we keep accepting some of these things as “just how hospitality works”? That question became HeyVar.
What I do at HeyVar
I connect the dots.
I’m a visionary, a problem solver, and a connector. I see where I think hospitality could go, spot the problems getting in the way, and bring the right people, ideas, and technology together to move things forward.
At HeyVar, I turn that into action. I shape the vision and strategy, work directly on the product and UI/UX, and use AI to explore, design, prototype, and rethink what is possible. I lead marketing and sales, build relationships with hotel owners, operators, candidates, partners, and investors, and build the team around the vision. I’m involved across the company, but the focus stays the same: understand the problem, find the opportunity, and build a better answer.
I’m also a natural networker. I love connecting with people who are passionate about what they do, understanding what drives them, and figuring out what happens when the right people get in the same room. Sometimes the answer is a product. Sometimes it’s a partnership. Sometimes it’s simply finding the person who knows something I don’t.
That curiosity is also what led me to create Hospitality Folks. I kept hearing from people who had struggled to have their passion for hospitality taken seriously, especially when family or friends saw it as something they had simply “fallen into.” I wanted to show another side of the industry: the people building fascinating careers, businesses, and lives across hospitality, travel, and hospitality tech. People who chose this world, built something meaningful in it, and are genuinely proud to call it their own.
At the heart of both HeyVar and Hospitality Folks is the same belief: people do their best work when they care about what they’re doing and have the people, environment, and tools around them to do it well.
That’s what I’m trying to build: better ways for passionate people to find each other, do more with less, and create something they’re proud of.
Personal / fun facts
I’m a mom, an American living in Germany, and someone who has a very hard time walking past an animal that looks like it needs help. I’ve ended up finding lost animals and taking them home more than once. I’m now teaching my son to do the same.
I love people and their stories. I can get completely absorbed in someone’s passion, whether they’re talking about technology, rocket science, animals, gardening, art, history, or something I knew absolutely nothing about five minutes earlier. I want to know what makes someone care so much about it.
If there was one place I could mentally live forever, it would be lying on soft, freshly cut grass on a cool summer day, cold lemonade in hand, watching the leaves wave gently back and forth in the breeze as little ribbons of sunlight sparkle through them. My dog stretched out beside me, listening to my son play and the birds sing. However, of course, I’m also known to suddenly get a new idea for my garden, jump up, and spend the next seven hours putting it into action, sometimes wearing very much the wrong clothing for gardening.
I have a soft spot for beautiful things. I’ll almost always find an art museum at the end of a work trip or make a point of visiting one when I’m somewhere new. I love exploring new cities, getting lost in their history or art, and then following it up with a pub crawl and trying all the vegan food I can find.
I spent half my life in high-level sports, and it gave me a mindset I’ve carried into almost everything I do. When there’s a problem, you bring it to the group, come with an idea, and work on it together. Sometimes the idea is terrible. That’s okay. With the right people around the table, a bad idea can become a great one. It also taught me that hard work, practice, and a genuine passion for learning will never lead you wrong.
I’m an extroverted introvert who loves an active adventure, just don’t ask me to climb a mountain.
Give me bare feet, champagne, a bonfire, a fluffy dog, passionate nerds, kind and real people, big ideas, and conversations that somehow turn into a little trauma bonding with a lot of laughter. That sounds like a pretty good day to me, any day.
