Personal Experience
After our very successful summer restaurant season in 2022, we found ourselves entering a new era for
our school. We welcomed our largest class yet, and it seemed that we had a lot of momentum in many
other facets of our business as well. Thus, to maintain this newfound success, we realized that we must
rely more than ever on strategic student recruitment. To accomplish this, we needed to create a new
position that would focus on many things, but primarily on getting new students in the door who would
fully fit into and benefit from the school’s unique program. Mary Eberts immediately came to mind. She
is a local, she has ambition, and she has a long history with our school, dating back to our first year of
operation. Besides recruiting, her new role includes facilitating funding for our students, managing our
service operation, developing promotional merchandise, and much more.
Mary grew up just a couple blocks from our school. Being community minded is second nature to her.
She graduated from Northern Michigan University with a bachelor’s degree in finance and risk
management and now lives in Rudyard with her fiancé, Zack Steikar, and their two-year-old son, Henry.
Mary started in late November 2022 and has been an amazing asset to our team. She has successfully
recruited more students, more quickly, than ever; our merchandise program is off and running, and we
are on our way to getting a brand-new website.