Career Growth Advice from Camille Mercier, business Leader | Career Tips for Women in business

2B Bolder Podcast – Episode 98
Featuring Camille Mercier, CEO of Spirit Mountain Casino

Episode Title: #98 Trailblazing Leadership in the Casino Industry: A Conversation with Camille Mercier

Host: Mary Killelea
Guest: Camille Mercier



Mary Killelea (Host): Hi there. My name is Mary Killelea. Welcome to the To Be Bolder podcast, providing career insights for the next generation of women in business and tech. To Be Bolder was created out of my love for technology and marketing, my desire to bring together like-minded women, and my hope to be a great role model and source of inspiration for my two girls and other young women like you. Encouraging you guys to show up and to be bolder and to know that anything you guys dream of, it's totally possible. So, sit back, relax, and enjoy the conversation.

Welcome back to the To Be Bolder podcast. My name is Mary Killelea and I'm your host today. Today we are so excited to have with us a truly inspiring guest. Her name is Camille Mercier. Camille has carved a remarkable path in the casino industry and currently leads as the CEO of Spirit Mountain Casino. She not only is a trailblazer in her field but also beacon of cultural and diversity awareness for her community.

Camille is an enrolled member of the Confederate Tribes of Grand Ronde. Her profound connection to her tribal heritage instills in her deep sense of responsibility and strong desire to contribute to the development and prosperity of her tribal community. In her role as CEO, she has successfully melded her passion for the industry with her dedication to her tribe. Camille, thank you so much for being here. It's a pleasure having you on the show.

Camille Mercier (Guest): Thank you, Mary. I'm honored to be here.

Mary Killelea: Thank you. What led you down the casino path as building a career? Did you see yourself where you are today?

Camille Mercier: No, I sure didn't. You know, in the 1990s, the tribe, the Grand Ronde tribe, which I've enrolled at, they were exploring different economic ventures to help sustain tribal programs. And they were really looking at gaming as well, bingo halls, really, to begin with, and then gaming as one of those opportunities to create revenue generation for the tribe and its programs.

So, I really saw this as an opportunity to get involved in a new business that fascinated me. You know, when the casino opened, I was pregnant with my son. And so, I didn't apply to the casino until he was about six months old, which was right about the time that the casino was about six months old. And I think because gaming was new to Indian tribes, I knew there would be all kinds of opportunities, but I certainly didn't expect how humbled and yet honored I've been to be a part of this amazing journey since 1996.

Mary Killelea: That's amazing. So, there's so many different paths within the gaming industry. And you kind of have to school me a little bit. I do some homework. So, it's like there's gaming operations, hospitality, customer service, management and administration, security, surveillance, entertainment and events, food and beverage, support services, legal and compliance. You got it all. We also have a wastewater treatment plant. It's kind of like a little city of its own, pretty self-sufficient, if you will. And I don't know that there's just one path to get to the CEO role.

And then, of course, tribal gaming is very different from like a corporate owned casino. Tribes are sovereign nations and really rise to the federal government level. And they have to negotiate with the state of which they're at, with the governor to say, can we have a gaming compact? And the compact really lays out what that tribe can do. And in Oregon, the compacts with most of the tribes, I believe all the tribes actually, state that each tribe could have one casino on reservation land. So, you'll see in other jurisdictions and other states, there are casinos, tribes have casinos in more than one place. And sometimes it depends on the class of gaming too. So, there's class two gaming and class three gaming. And we're a class three gaming facility. So, we negotiated, or the tribe actually negotiated with the government. And we have a compact with the state of Oregon to have gaming, just like seven of the other tribes in Oregon do.

So, a strong way to a strategic role would really be a formal education, you know, and what I have seen in that realm has been a legal education or a strong financial education with a background in preferably gaming, or at least Indian tribes, because it's that being owned by a tribe is just a little bit unique with the roles and the regulations. It's such a heavily regulated industry that it gets interesting at times. And the Grand Ronde tribe and casino is self-regulated, which is, it's a great feather in their cap to say that they've been very well managed, done their due diligence and have done all the appropriate things for a casino to operate.

So, beyond the formal education, I would say that, you know, it takes probably a little bit more or a lot more than just kind of book learning. Obviously, I think it takes good people skills, some ability to persevere in difficult times, of course, determination, and probably the right attitude, you know, that's a 24 seven organization and customer service can be tough and it can be difficult. We had some difficult years during COVID and you learn a lot when you don't have the ability that you've normally had. Of course, understanding the business dynamics, the foundation of what a business, particularly a casino operates, how things fit together, I think that's just really critical, but I think anybody can come up through the different disciplines. I started in human resources and really worked my way up into the director position for many years. And what that did is it afforded me the opportunity to learn every department in a sense, and especially if I was recruiting for a department, I would have the ability to spend a lot of time job shadowing, talking to the people in the department, learning how the inner workings all fit together. And then of course, how do they work with the EBS team and how does the EBS work with maintenance? And I was afforded that opportunity just due to the department I came up in. Whereas I think, you know, if you were in maintenance, you might not really be exposed to the finance area or different disciplines within the organization. I think I was lucky in that regard to be exposed to all the different areas.

And then also, I worked closely with our CEO and every CEO that we've had, our general manager, and really picked their brains and said, what is a strategic mindset? What does that look like? And, you know, I don't know if I felt early on that it's like some sort of veil you walk through and all of a sudden you're just magically strategic. I don't know what I thought, but I certainly learned a lot over the years. And I think that it's a great, it's been a great career for me. And I think that it is a great career for anybody who wants to make it in their career path.

Mary Killelea: So I have so many questions for you. This is so fascinating. Okay. So was there like a special aha moment in your career where you said, okay, I'm ready. I'm ready to step up and I'm ready to take on leading this organization?

Camille Mercier So, it's a little bit of that over self-assurance, but also after I finished grad school, or about probably going through grad school and learning the more formalized approaches to business, I had a lot of like, oh, wow, you know, there's some amazing things that can be done with any business really. But just imagine the, what I felt like I brought to this role is the connection to the tribe, being a tribal member, having that intrinsic value of what our tribal community needs and expects and the revenue that comes from a casino goes to a nation of people.

And not just, you know, the pockets of some rich person who owns a casino, it's really supporting a nation of people who haven't necessarily had the same opportunities as others in the past, especially if you came from a tribe that was terminated by the government. And so I think I, I had this overconfidence in a way of like, oh, I can do this. So it was probably right around the time that I was in grad school, and I was the director of the HR department at the time, but it was kind of an a-ha of like, okay, now I need to really sit down and say, what competencies do I need? And what's the self-reflection of my blind spots? And that's not always easy to do, especially, you know, when you're trying to be self-assured and confident and do a good job, and then to go and admit to somebody, especially maybe a mentor that you don't know, it can be intimidating, but I think vulnerability is a little bit of the recipe too.

So it's been a great journey. And I think it was really probably about the time that I was in grad school, but I knew that I needed experience outside of Spirit Mountain. I started here just six months after it opened, and I worked here for 15 years. And I really considered Spirit Mountain my baby. It was something I took a lot of pride in, and I knew that I had to leave. I knew that I needed to get experience, ideally, at another tribally-owned casino to see how they may have operated differently, but also at a corporate-owned casino that wasn't tribal. And I knew this, but it's weird how sometimes you think something, and then it just kind of comes to you. And I think my phone listens to me and does that a lot, but really I had this thought, and a recruiter that I'd worked with to fill jobs here called me one day and said, okay, it's time for me to give you a pitch. And I said, what do you mean? And he said, well, there's an opportunity in the Midwest, and I think you'd be perfect for it. And it's a company that believes in women leaders. And I was nervous about it. And of course, I had just bought a brand new house. So, it was scary, but it was also probably the best thing I did. But I moved 2,000 miles away, and without a support system, without where I'm at now, I can pretty much call anybody day or night if I needed help with something. And it was interesting moving to a new area, not knowing a soul and starting a new job. And it's not as easy to make friends when you're 40 something versus 20 something, but it was a great experience. I wouldn't trade it for anything.

And so I went and worked for another corporate casino for several years. And then I knew I wanted to get back to the West Coast, and my son was finishing high school. And so I looked for a job on the West Coast, and I took a job in Washington at another tribally owned casino, which was fascinating in and of itself too. So, it took that aha moment, but also kind of coming to terms with, okay, now there's some real things I got to do differently. And being comfortable in the uncomfortable, if that makes sense.

Mary Killelea: Oh, yeah. No, I'd love hearing your story. And you're the first woman to hold the CEO position at Spirit Mountain Casino. What message do you think this sends to women aspiring to be with leadership in leadership roles like yourself? And do you feel pressure in any type of responsibility to like women looking up to you, because I'm sure there's not very many female leaders in the space.

Camille Mercier: It's pressure, but it's self-imposed pressure. I don't know that I feel pressure necessarily from any one person or anybody that I could say, you know, is looking up to me. I think that, you know, we have a whole generation of tribal members and also females who don't have a lot of role models. So, I think that's important. But I also think that it's important to, for future generations, if that makes sense. It's my family members I haven't met yet that I want to do such a good thing for and really keep this as a viable business for the longevity of our tribe.

Mary Killelea: You've been known, or you are known, I should say, as an innovative leader. What is your unique approach in leadership? You know, I think I probably was more innovative in my prior roles, and now I need to be intentional to let other people be innovative, because my nature is just like jump in and do. And pretty early on in the role, I had some frank conversations, which takes a lot of trust for people to do. People coming in saying, hey, do you not trust me to do my job? And I was like, what are you talking about? I'm helping. And I really wasn't. I was maybe hindering or almost disrespecting somebody, because they had just a great, probably greater ideas than I even have.

So, I think the big takeaway there is being humble and asking a lot of questions to allow people to get their point across, come up with great ideas, be innovative and collaborative. I think that the more collaborative the team is, the stronger we are. And I've always been a pretty collaborative leader. I'm not afraid to make the decisions, especially if it's time sensitive. But I'll tell you, I think if we spend a little bit more time on the front end, getting different perspectives, different line of employees, different line levels of employees, perspectives, and how we're making decisions that may affect one workflow, how the people who do actually doing the work is probably listen to them a little bit. So it takes a little bit more time on the forefront, but I've often found that it's less time in the beginning than in the end to unravel something that you should have done in the first place. So yeah, I think that collaboration is important. I think the more you have an engagement with people, the more they enjoy work, the more that it's fun. And also, people take pride in what they do. And the more we can get people to say it's okay to make mistakes, that we became stronger and we've become better.

I've had to also remind myself to keep my ego in check and be humble and remember to allow myself to be vulnerable, but also embrace things that I'm not comfortable with. But these days, I'm not as concerned with taking credit personally for anything. I gladly give credit to our team, but I think it's important to prioritize people, processes, and the collective outcomes that we can make.

Mary Killelea: It's so refreshing to hear this. It really is. And you may not think that's unique, but in today's world, I think your philosophies of really trusting and embracing people and allowing them to lead in their own roles is very refreshing. And you've been in the business for 27 years. How has the casino business changed?

Camille Mercier: Oh, gosh. I have to say that it has changed with technology, just like probably every sector of the world has changed. I mean, the way we play machines, how points are earned, how we order our drinks from the machine, how we order our food at the restaurants, a card to open our hotel door, our phone to do our payroll and clock in or ask for time off. The technological advances in this industry have been huge. I mean, I think about the graphics that are on slot machines today compared to the old reels we used to see. And it's just phenomenal. It's in HD.

Of course, the way we've marketed to our players, I think AI has done a lot to say, how do you market to somebody that in an industry that's evolved over time, of course, but also gives us the opportunity to really cater to the individual and to their likes, wants, preferences, and hone in on our guests. Casinos aren't new to Oregon. And I think we're at the point of market saturation. And so, these tools have been very handy in saying, how do we speak to our guests? How do we appeal to them or get them to visit us?

But there's also some damage that can be done with that. And I think that the days of organized crime members walking through your front door to bully you or shake you down, those are over. The real vulnerability is on the technical side and hackers and people getting into our systems. And so, it's really critical and crucial that we have the best firewalls and systems that protect the company. Almost every day you were hearing about companies being held hostage for their information. And I don't think that a casino is any different, but there can be some vulnerabilities just with all the great advances. It can be vulnerable too.

Mary Killelea: So that's interesting because security is everywhere or the need for security is everywhere. And you forget how many opportunities there are in security. I've interviewed women in the security field, and they just say, we have so many more jobs than women could ever apply to. But in your line of business with all of the roles and responsibilities that I mentioned earlier in the direction you could have gone, security, hospitality, or administration, operations. Is there a segment that you see a strong opportunity for women or are all the opportunities really widely open, if you will?

Camille Mercier: I think there's opportunity where you make it. And that said though, I think women are really underrepresented in the IT field. Even the tech field with slot machines, we have a great assistant manager right now who's over our slot techs. But I think she might be the only female in that role. But I think there's a lot of opportunities for women to get involved in those. And I don't know if it's because I look back on growing up and maybe there were just subtleties of like, well, boys are good at math, girls are good at reading, or those kinds of things. And so I don't know if it's that type of societal norms that have created these pathways for particular genders. But I certainly would like to see more females in these roles that have traditionally been held by men.

Mary Killelea: Another thing that I like to touch on in these interviews is just the challenges of having confidence in careers. How have you been able to maintain your self-confidence along your journey?

Camille Mercier: Well, I would say it was probably more not confident at times because it especially in this industry, you wonder, am I on the right pathway? Am I doing the right thing? I think one is being intentional. And I don't know if you remember those Stephen Covey inserts that would go into your planner that you'd write your calendar out with. And in the back of those, it had some pages that you could fill out. And I think it was like sharpen the saw type of things. And I didn't fill them all out, but I was all diligently every year I would sit down and I would say, okay, what are my goals for this year? What's my personal mission? And write those things out. And I don't know that it was when I wasn't feeling confident or if I was feeling insecure, but I just regularly always check to say, okay, am I on the right pathway? If I had goals for myself, am I hitting those goals? And every year I also try to learn something new that isn't necessarily work-related or school-related. And I always have that one goal.

And so it always kept me anchored a little bit into, am I doing the right thing? And a little bit of pride when you do accomplish something, but also a little bit of pride recognizing maybe you didn't do the right thing, but you recognized it. And sometimes it would be easy to say, oh no, that was really the right thing I did. Or that was the right decision. But I don't know, being humble I think is important and balancing it with not letting your ego be too much but not being afraid to be assertive. I think that's one thing as a female, we always want to pre-qualify things like, well, I think, or I heard this, or I read this, rather than just saying what you believe or your opinion. And that's still hard for me to do.

Mary Killelea: Thanks. Have you had mentors along the way?

Camille Mercier: Yeah. And I don't know that I've ever labeled them as mentors because I've always wondered how do you ask somebody to be a mentor when the whole phrase came out? But really in hindsight, my first general manager here or CEO here was actually just my last CEO. And he was instrumental in guiding and saying, have you thought about this? Or asking questions that would kind of pull out answers and then give you those little bit of aha moments. And he left the casino probably in the early 2000s. And when he had heard that I'd left, I think it was about 2010, he actually called me and said, you're doing the right thing. This is it. You're on the right track. And I remember, because I was driving to Nebraska and I was like, I have a call from, you know, this is strange. And then he said, I heard you're going and I think this is great and you'll grow and you'll do things and it'll be hard and you'll love it. And so, yeah, I've had so many different mentors for different things.

My grandma was probably the biggest role model. I tend to think that I come from a strong line of Native women, but especially my grandmother who, gosh, you know, talk about resiliency or perseverance. She was somebody who really believed in the impossible, that it was, that the impossible was possible. She used to tell me when I talked to her about things and I'd say, oh, I don't think I can do that. And she'd be like, well, why not? If not you, then who? You know, it's got to be somebody, so why not? And there was times that I thought I could do anything probably because of her, because she was just that much like, learn it and do it. You know, like there's no excuses. Just do it. So, she was very instrumental.

She and her brother and their friend, there's actually a statue of them in front of the tribal government building, and the statue is called the visionaries. And really, because they had a vision of the tribe becoming a tribe again. In the 1950s, the government terminated the tribe and basically said, all tribal members are now Americans and you're no longer a tribe. You're just an American. And I think there's a lot of issues with self-identity. There were so many trauma type things that happened during that time, but in the 70s, my grandma and her brother and a good friend of theirs, they were all tribal members. They began the pathway towards restoration and getting the federal government to recognize the Grand Ronde tribe as a tribe again. And that happened in the early 80s. And it's been significant. And I remember, gosh, as a kid, my grandma and my mom would be going to meetings and meetings, and we'd travel here and there. And I remember I'd say, well, why do we gotta do this? And my grandma would say, because we're going to have a better life.

And because, you know, going without the health care for a long time, you know, created a lot of medical issues for individuals who were, through a treaty said that they'd be cared for, for their entirety of their lives. And so there was several generations who went without a dentist and tooth care and getting their diabetes checked and went blind and lost limbs and different things. So, you know, she would say, because we're gonna be healthier and we're gonna live and we're going to get educated and we're gonna have a better life. And as you know, a 12 year old, you'd be like, yeah, I'd rather like go skating or whatever we're doing at the time. She was engaged and, you know, there were times when she was too hard on me too, but in hindsight, it was probably for the best.

Mary Killelea: And what would you tell your 20 year old?

Camille Mercier: I would say, stop trying to grow up so fast. I think I was, I was in a hurry to grow up too much too fast. Just enjoy the journey. There's no, there's no race to the end, I guess.

Mary Killelea: Yeah. What does to be bolder mean to you?

Camille Mercier: You know, I think a lot about that. And, and it really, to me, almost just like, not just having the courage, but almost having like the audacity to have courage, the audacity to really pursue your aspirations, even, even in the midst of challenges and conflict and, and all the excuses that, that you could imagine and the audacity to be true to who you are, even though sometimes you want to fit in, you know, being vulnerable, authentic and true to yourself.

Mary Killelea: That's amazing. How do you continue to be resilient and avoid burnout?

Camille Mercier: Balance, it's really reminding myself to be intentional every day and, and that, well, some things are urgent that need to be taken care of, having priorities in my life and remembering that my health is a priority and my wellness is a priority. So, I, you know, balance it with my own hobbies or trips or just self-care, fudging out in front of the TV at times.

Mary Killelea: What legacy do you aspire to leave behind in your professional journey?

Camille Mercier: I would like to leave a legacy that, anything's possible, especially for minority women. I think that sometimes you have to open the doors that might not, or that might be locked and it's not always easy, but I think that opening those doors, walking through it, again, having courage to walk through them and learning as you go along. I think that my legacy is giving back to people and giving back to the tribe and, and hopefully inspiring people.

Mary Killelea: Oh, I definitely think you're inspiring people. You're certainly inspiring me today. I have a fun way we're going to wrap this up. We're going to go into a rapid fire. So you ready?

Camille Mercier: Okay.

Mary Killelea: Waffle or pancakes?

Camille Mercier: Waffles.

Mary Killelea: Comedy or drama?

Camille Mercier: Drama.

Mary Killelea: Fiction or non-fiction?

Camille Mercier: Fiction. Oh, I tend to, I tend to be reading a lot of non-fiction as well, but I, I prefer fiction.

Mary Killelea: Do you like to cook or eat out?

Camille Mercier: Eat out. Any, anytime I don't have to cook or do dishes, I’m in.

Mary Killelea: Coffee or tea?

Camille Mercier: Coffee.

Mary Killelea: And last one, pasta or pizza?

Camille Mercier: Pizza.

Mary Killelea: I have had so much fun getting to know you and hear your journey. I really appreciate you being on the show, sharing your story and being an inspiration to all of us.

Camille Mercier: Well, thank you, Mary. I'm humbled and honored and just appreciate the time today.

Mary Killelea: Thanks for listening to the episode today. It was really fun chatting with my guests. If you liked our show, please like it and share it with your friends. If you want to learn what we're up to, please go check out our website at to be bolder dot com. That's the number two little b bolder.com.