The Peninsula's Maria Razumich-Zec

The power woman behind one of Chicago's toniest hotels

The Peninsula’s legendary lobby is Chicago’s consummate spot for tête-à-têtes. And to my eyes, it’s in perfect form on the day I’m there to meet the hotel’s regional vice president – USA East Coast, Maria Razumich-Zec, for tea. Sunshine is streaming though the enormous floor-to-ceiling windows, giving the classy, continental-style setting a golden glow, while an impeccably groomed wait-staff hovers, surreptitiously waiting to cosset the guests.

But when Maria enters the room, it becomes clear that my eyes are untrained.

As she makes her way towards me, she surveys the room and corrals two waiters to restore order where necessary. There are crooked placemats to set straight, skewed tables to adjust and my mess in the corner, where I’ve set up my laptop to take notes. My power cord can potentially trip someone, and my table is a touch too close to others given the fact that we’ll be talking. Yet Maria’s manner is so smooth, and her voice so well modulated, that her remedial tactics to fix my faux pas don’t register until long after she’s set everything right.

Of course, I was also too busy scrutinizing this elegant executive to pay attention to such logistics. She stands almost six feet tall in heels, is blessed with a glossy, thick, tawny mane that glints with blond highlights and was chicly turned out in a body-skimming black sheath, a tan jacket and classic beige-and-black Chanel spectator pumps that neatly pull the pieces together.

Like the hotel she runs, Maria is in perfect form. Looking at the plate of pastries on our table, and back to her long, sleek frame, I mention she’s lucky to be tall. The innuendo of my comment registers immediately. “I’m the shortest person in my family, and I watch what I eat,” she confides with an amiable smile. “I just did the PhysioLife Studios detox program, and work out with a personal trainer in our gym.”

Life must be nice with the resources of the city’s most posh, well-appointed five star hotel at your disposal – the state-of-the-art gym, the ultra-pampering spa, the extraordinary gourmet fare and more. But a few minutes with Maria brings the pointed adage “there’s no such thing as a free lunch” to mind.

“I thought I worked a lot of hours when I was in retail, but then I took a job as an assistant hotel manager with the Chicago Hilton and Towers and worked from midnight to noon, six days a week, for six months,” she recollects when we talk about how she got into hospitality. In this field, particularly long hours are de rigueur.

Also, she points out that Peninsula employees pay for the hotel goods and services they use off-duty – herself included. And she’s just happy and grateful to have access to such wonderful fare and superb services.

And it turns out that grueling hours are perhaps the least challenging issue in her world.

“Everything happens at hotels. I’ve been through fires, floods, emergencies and deaths. Once, I had 18 lawyers stuck in an elevator for over an hour at 2am,” she says, hastily adding “none of these mishaps happened at The Peninsula.” Of course, there are also plenty of good incidents, from marriage proposals and weddings to special occasions and holiday celebrations. Yet as Maria makes clear, they all require hard work, resourcefulness and attention to detail.

Not surprisingly, given the constant stream of action she sees, Maria espouses an admirable and inspiring mantra: “Try as hard as possible to make things right.” And if things don’t work out, she has a second but equally key imperative: “always be humble.” When those lawyers finally got out of the stuck elevator, an incident that occurred early in her career, she was deferential to a fault. “It took a lot of apologizing” to make things right, she recalls.