Molly Ross
Business Manager, Blue Hills Ski Area, Mass.
Age: 24
Hometown: Brockton, Mass.
Six-word bio: Work hard and love your job.
Fun fact: Once drove a duck boat—an amphibious WWII-style vehicle—through the streets of Boston while working for a tour company.

This year’s youngest nominee, Molly Ross spent her teen years skiing the slopes of Wachusett Mountain with the ski club. During college in Boston, she worked as a cashier at Blue Hills and was offered a full-time job upon graduation. Ross quickly progressed from customer service to HR to business manager, a role she’s held for the past three years.

What’s the job of business manager entail?
Blue Hills is a small ski area, so we all take on a multitude of responsibilities. I’m responsible for recruiting, hiring, payroll, overseeing indoor departments like customer service and F&B, and tracking different projects. On any given day I’m doing like 50 different things, but it keeps it interesting.

Do you supervise anyone?
Yes, the customer service, F&B, and rental managers.

How do you define a good leader?
Being a good leader in the ski industry, you have to be adaptable. Every day is completely different than the day before.

What’s a proud moment for you?
I am proud of the recruitment program I put together last spring. I analyzed issues that we’ve had with recruiting seasonal employees and developed several new recruiting programs and a plan to solve these issues. The results were incredible. We had the largest turnout out we've ever had at our on-site job fairs and the largest group of applicants through our online questionnaire.

In 10 years?
Definitely still in the ski industry, in a management role. This is kind of my niche. The opportunity to do so many things at Blue Hills will definitely give me the skills to manage in this industry.