Sarah Johnson

Kelly Simmons

Johnson, from Valdosta, Ga., readies a table at the Savannah Room.
Photographer Abbey Benefield

Sarah Johnson had worked in the food industry as a teenager, but always in the background. As an intern at the UGA Center for Continuing Education & Hotel, she had the opportunity to explore the many positions that keep a full-service conference center running smoothly.

“I’d never worked the front of the house,” Johnson says. “I was a line cook at a local restaurant (Steel Magnolia’s in Valdosta) and decorated cakes at Cecilia’s bakery (in Athens).”

It was at the Georgia Center during internships in Food and Beverage that Johnson discovered she liked being out front and interacting with people. Pouring drinks at the hotel bar, working the hot meals serving line or making coffee for guests at the Bistro all provided ample opportunities to meet different people from different places, many of them regulars in continuing education courses, at annual conferences or hotel guests on Georgia football home game weekends for decades.

“People would come by and say, ‘I served at the Savannah Room 70 years ago. Do y’all still have the strawberry ice cream pie?’ ” Johnson says. “I love talking to different people.”

The experience at the Georgia Center prepared her well for her first job after graduating from UGA with an HFIM degree. As part of the selective Marriott Voyage Program, a prestigious year-long management training and leadership program, Johnson was assigned to the J.W. Marriott Hotel in Clearwater Beach, Fla., in early August 2024, about a year after the property opened to guests.

In her first month, she helped manage the hotel’s many outlets, like the market, the beach bar, the barista bar, and three restaurants.

The experience reminds her of the Georgia Center, where as an intern she often worked wherever help was needed—behind the bar on football Saturdays, with banquets setting up, serving, and breaking down meals for groups, delivering in-room dining orders.

As a new manager, she’s also leaning on examples set by her supervisors at the Georgia Center.

Johnson says. “I want to support and defend my employees.”

The Georgia Center managers prepared me for who I wanted to be as a manager.