I recently embarked on an incredible journey as a new member of the MGM Resorts and Aria Hotel and Casino family, and I am thrilled to share my experience of the remarkable culture that has left me in awe. From day one, the dedication to excellence was palpable — woven into every interaction, every protocol, every team member I encountered. What struck me most was not the grandeur of the property itself, but the invisible architecture of values and expectations that made every experience exceptional.
First Impressions: Excellence as Standard, Not Exception
Walking into Aria as a new team member, I expected the same onboarding experience I had seen in dozens of organizations across my career — a mix of paperwork, policy review, and the usual effort to appear impressive in the early days. What I found instead was something altogether different: a culture in which excellence was not performed for new employees. It simply was.
The standards at MGM Resorts are not aspirational — they are operational. They are embedded in how people speak to each other, how they speak to guests, how problems are resolved, and how leadership shows up on the floor. The message, conveyed without a single explicit statement, was clear: this is who we are, and if you are here, this is who you will be too.
For a student of organizational culture and leadership — which I have been throughout my academic career and doctoral research — this was a living laboratory of best practices.
The Culture of Care
What distinguishes great hospitality organizations from merely good ones is their relationship with care. Not care as a policy, not care as a service standard to be monitored — but care as a genuine orientation toward the guest experience that begins with how leadership treats its team members.
At MGM, I observed something that I believe is the central driver of their organizational excellence: leadership at every level treats team members with the same level of dignity and attention that team members are expected to extend to guests. This is not a coincidence. It is a design principle.
When people feel genuinely valued by their organization, they pass that feeling forward. When employees are treated with respect, acknowledged for their contributions, and given clear paths for growth, they bring their best selves to every guest interaction. The culture of care cascades — from executive to manager to front-line team member to guest.
Learning from Scale
One of the most fascinating aspects of joining an organization the size of MGM Resorts is observing how a culture maintains its integrity across such scale. This is one of the greatest challenges in organizational management — and one that most organizations fail to solve.
The answer, as I observed it at Aria, lies in clarity of values combined with consistency of accountability. The values are not vague aspirations painted on a wall — they are specific, behavioral, and reinforced through recognition, coaching, and leadership modeling. When the people at the top of an organization genuinely embody the culture they espouse, it travels down through the hierarchy with remarkable fidelity.
I have carried this insight back to my own organizations. The cultural standard that I expect my teams to maintain begins with what I myself demonstrate on the hardest days — not the easy ones.
What Every Leader Can Take from This
Whether you lead a team of five or an organization of fifty thousand, the principles that make MGM Resorts exceptional are available to you. They are not about budget or brand recognition. They are about decisions made every day at every level of the organization.
Decide that your standards will not waver based on how busy you are. Decide that how you treat the people around you — when no one is watching, when you are tired, when everything is going wrong — defines the culture you are building. Decide that excellence is not an event you perform for audits and inspections. It is who you are.
“Culture is not what an organization says it is. Culture is what it does when it is under pressure, when it is inconvenient, and when no one outside is watching. MGM Resorts taught me what that looks like when done right.”— Dr. Osmel Villarreal
Joining MGM and Aria was more than a professional milestone. It was an education in what is possible when an organization commits — at every level, with every resource, in every interaction — to genuine greatness. I am grateful for what it has taught me, and determined to apply those lessons in every space I lead.