Feature photo: Abbi and team Rent Responsibly (left) and Abbi with Dana Lubner (right)
The career path of Abbi Booth, Director of Alliance Operations at Rent Responsibly, illustrates the tremendous growth at the company during the past 18 months.
Abbi joined Rent Responsibly as community manager in March 2021 and tag-teamed the management of five alliances with Head of Leadership Development Dana Lubner.
Growing number of STR alliances
Less than a year later, Abbi became the first Rent Responsibly employee to be promoted due to her hard work and the rapid growth of alliances. She now heads alliance operations and hired Martha Medina in April 2022 to replace her previous role. Abbi and Martha now manage 10 STR alliances and counting.
“One accomplishment that I’m really proud to have been a part of is helping our alliance department grow,” Abbi said. “It was not just a big deal for our team but for the groups we help support as well, and I think it is an indicator that we are doing something right and that there is a growing need for our support.”
Get involved: Find your local alliance
Supporting short-term rental alliances
Like the rest of the team, Abbi works remotely and stays connected via Slack and Zoom meetings with her colleagues and alliance leaders. She is based in her home office in Gardnerville, Nevada, where her two dogs, Zoey and Nova, and her cat, Sasha, wait eagerly outside her office door for workday intermissions.
Abbi’s job largely involves making sure Rent Responsibly’s alliance support is operating effectively and ensuring alliances have the resources to advocate for themselves.
She also supports alliances in using a relatively new software platform developed by Rent Responsibly called ComHub (short for community hub). The platform empowers alliances by enabling paid memberships and providing valuable members-only resources.
Abbi has been “the bridge between software and alliance leaders to coordinate timelines and communicate new or complex topics,” Alexa Nota, Rent Responsibly COO, said
during the software launch in July 2022.
Passion for travel
Before working at Rent Responsibly, Abbi was the program manager at the Society for Professional Journalists (SPJ) and the executive director of ACES: The Society for Editing.
She chose to work at Rent Responsibly because it was a place where she could feel passionate about the mission and because she could see that the leaders and employees already on staff were committed to their team.
Her interest in vacation rentals stemmed from staying in them during trips as an adult. She and her husband, Sam, who works in a municipal planning department, enjoyed talking about vacation rentals “because it was interesting to us, and we are both really passionate about traveling.”
“I never really had the opportunity to travel much growing up, and my family didn’t have a ton of extra money for vacations,” she said. “I began traveling a lot for work out of college and really loved experiencing new places.
“I really appreciate the value vacation rentals bring to the travel industry because they open travel up to so many different types of people, some who may not have had the opportunity to travel otherwise. I also really love the way vacation rentals can bring friends and family together to experience new places in such a unique way that is different from a hotel stay.”
For example, staying in a short-term rental near New York City with friends – one of whom was a New Yorker – in October 2019 helped her to experience the city like a local.
“New York City was on my top list to visit, live, everything growing up,” Abbi said. “My dad had a tradition of taking each one of us kids to New York City on a solo trip growing up, but my dad passed away before he and I were able to go.”
Her friend, a tour guide and former copy editor for the New York Times, guided Abbi and her friends around New York City by train and gave them a tour of Central Park.
“New York City in the fall was magical,” Abbi said. “It was everything I thought it would be and sharing that experience with a true New Yorker and some of my best friends was something I’ll always remember.”
A solid rock of support and positive change for alliances and communities
She said the most exciting part of working at Rent Responsibly is “helping alliances have a meaningful impact within their communities to result in positive change.”
Her role also comes with challenges, which she and her team share together.
“Working with so many different groups in so many different regions means working with a lot of different personalities,” she said. “Some are more challenging than others, which means finding the right balance to meeting expectations and needs but making sure it’s doable on Rent Responsibly’s part.”
Dana, who works with Abbi in empowering alliance leaders, said she relies on Abbi for support during those challenging times.
Abbi is “such a solid rock of support when I feel like I’ve hit a dead end trying to motivate and inspire leaders,” Dana said during a recent staff meeting. “She brings new ideas on how to handle a situation that needs fresh perspective. It gives me life and more fuel in the tank.”
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