From acting to hotels, GM aims to bring community back to Hilton
Steven Ellingsen is the new general manager of the Hilton Chicago/Oak Brook Hills Resort & Conference Center in Oak Brook. And his entry into the hotel industry years ago was via acting.
He had been an actor and model at the well-known Ford and La Belle talent agencies in Hollywood and even traveled worldwide, including Europe and Asia. But he wasn't getting the parts he wanted. And it just wasn't enough to pay the bills, he said.
"Then a friend suggested I take a job with the Ritz Carlton," said Ellingsen, 48, who was born and raised in Santa Barbara, California.
Taking a job at the Ritz hearkened to his first job during junior high school as a busboy for the famous Big Yellow House in Montecito, California. Then in 1992, he was working the front desk of the Ritz, which led to moving up the ladder and, later, to other positions at other hotels and resorts. He has since served as general manager at six hotels and resorts in the last 10 years.
But this Southern California guy may have been traveling around to various cities, he still remained close to his father, Harold Ellingsen, a project aerial nautical engineer with NASA who worked on the Apollo missions, including on the mission control room floor. The younger Ellingsen remembers talking with his father about the work on those missions, including the troubled Apollo 13 mission.
"I was an only child and my father and I had lot of conversations about his work. I was very mature at a young age, which is different for a lot of kids," he said.
Those conversations helped to guide the young Ellingsen along his own career path and, later, as a father of three sons.
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While he had various jobs at a number of hotels in the last 20 years, he served as general manager at the Whitehall Hotel on the Gold Coast of Chicago before coming to the Hilton in Oak Brook. When he arrived in February, the Hilton was in the midst of a renovation started by previous general manager, Stefan Muhle, who has since left for another hotel.
Ellingsen's goals now are to finish the remodeling project at the Hilton and launch the new restaurant by May, he said.
"We want to bring back tradition in the community, and make it the meeting and gathering spot again," he said.
FastTracks
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