International Women's Day spotlight of our Executive Manager, Katarina Triska

I was given the opportunity by my father to join the emuamericas’ team in my mid 20’s as I wanted to carve a new career path. My father’s motto has always been “go make mistakes with someone else’s money first”. Since a young age, our father always made us set goals in school and in sports. He taught us how to work hard to achieve them and if we failed, we went back to it and trained harder to accomplish our goals. This mindset is still instilled in us today and guides us through every workday. I love reaching the goals that we set for ourselves. I worked hard during college, completing the in-store management program with The Gap while taking a full curriculum for a double major and being part of the tennis team. Once I graduated, I worked as a manager in the store. However, I had my eyes set on a master’s degree, but first I needed a break. I had the opportunity to travel with my youngest sister on the WTA (Pro Women Tennis) Tour. We travelled all over the world, learned from different cultures and saw beautiful places. Unfortunately, as she reached her best ranking of no. 147 in the world at the age of 17, injuries struck her. I knew it was then time to go back to school and get my master’s degree in International Business Management. While getting my degree, I also had a full-time job in marketing at a private merger and acquisitions company. I realized that I would never be able to advance my career there, so it was time to ask my father for that job at emuamericas. I started at the bottom in customer service, then became the contract sales manager and today, I lead the entire emuamericas’ team. My youngest sister Kristina went back to school and received both her college and master’s degree in hospitality, all while playing tennis on her college team and then teaching tennis. With time, she joined the emuamericas’ team in order entry, then customer service manager, and now she runs the day-to-day operations with the warehouse team and oversees all our accounting. When my sisters and I are at work, it is work. When we are outside of work on our personal family time, we make it a point to not talk business, unless we schedule the time to do so. We each have our families and we understand the need to separate work and personal time. This is what makes our business strong. We always strive hard to achieve our yearly sales goals, and other than those economical hiccups back in 2008/2009 and recently in 2020 with COVID-19, we have grown the business three-fold in the last 15 years working together. In recent years, we have also bought the business from our father, and we are currently in the process to make it a Women’s Owned Business Enterprise. I love that every day is different here at emuamericas. Every day I try to help a different customer source product for their project or work with a team member to achieve their tasks. I love seeing the projects we fulfilled when travelling and seeing our team members continue to strive for greater sales and service in all aspects of the business. When it comes to women who inspire me, I am personally grateful for our mom, who took time out from being a physical therapist to care for us when we were young. Our dad was always travelling for his business, so our mom is a great inspiration on how she was able to stay on top of me and my sisters’ schoolwork, activities, and heavy sports schedules. She is a great multi-tasker that we all learned from. In the professional realm, I am always curious on how women become leaders in different business sectors, and I love to listen to everyone’s story and achievements. My advice for professional women is to not be afraid to speak up and ask for something. Do your job, work harder than anyone and you will see the fruits of your labor. I believe us women have come a long way over the years. When I first started in the business, we hit the foodservice industry hard, and it was truly a man’s world! However, I never felt intimidated or frowned upon when showing up in a major national account corporate office or at a foodservice dealer, because I knew my lingo, I knew my products and was never afraid to always voice my opinion if I thought the product chosen was not correct. I believe this has led me to great connections over the years and people come to me asking for my knowledge in the outdoor furniture world. Now, I see a lot more women in foodservice, and I am proud to be part of this movement to see more women in this sector and become leaders. As we celebrate this year’s International Women’s Day, I want to wish all women the very best of success and joy in their goals and careers!