In a number of ways, Laura Lee Blake, president and CEO of AAHOA, is the perfect person to lead the hotel owners association. Blake grew up in a small town in Iowa, part of a “strong and loving family” in a close-knit, very religious community. That mirrors the upbringing and current lifestyle of many of the group’s nearly 20,000 members and provides a common frame of reference for Blake and the members to start from.

“It was just a perfect upbringing,” Blake said. “I see a lot of that in the AAHOA community and how they interact. They have these discussions about how their parents grew up in villages next to each other and I can relate, growing up in a small town in Iowa like that, where we have a lot of similar kinds of connections.”

Another major connection Blake has with AAHOA’s Members is being inspired by a parent’s experience in business—often that parent’s feeling of not having a voice or not being heard. In Blake’s case, it was her father, who owned a General Motors franchise in rural Iowa.

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