As a Revenue Manager at Beyond, Deena Sewihy is one of our resident experts on Beyond’s dynamic pricing algorithm — affectionately called the algo. When she is not on-call supporting our customers, you can find her creating new markets to price, setting base prices for accounts, sending out booking reports, checking in on accounts to ensure success, and really, doing anything that involves pricing and the algo.

Beyond her revenue expertise, Deena is passionate about diversity and inclusion efforts, even presenting at events like the Vacation Rental Women’s Summit. There, she got to connect with like-minded talented, successful women in the short-term rental industry and present her expertise and learnings. In our latest Going Beyond blog post, our blog series where we sit down with a Beyonder to talk about their experiences, career, and background, we got to chat with Deena. We talked about how she got started at Beyond, why diversity is important, and how she sees Beyond acting on its commitment to diversity and inclusion.

How did you get started in the short-term rental industry and with Beyond?

I started in January 2021. I came in from the hotel industry, starting there with operations and sales. Then I moved on to revenue management, which naturally led to my role here at Beyond. When I started at Beyond, there was so much ground to cover - and there still is! I’ve been here almost a year and I’ve barely scratched the surface, but I love supporting the short-term rental industry. 

What is your favorite thing about working at Beyond?

Beyond gives me ownership and creativity over my role. A big part of my job is to advise our customers on their pricing strategies. So I get to lend my best expertise and be creative in that way. I can use all the data points and resources available to me to feel confident advising an account.

You’ve seen your team grow from 4 people to 6 over the last year, what has that been like?

Growth has been great to see! Beyond's customer base has continued to grow a lot this year, along side a booming short-term rental industry, and our team felt the workload increase with that growth. It has been such a tremendous help since the new team members started. This growth has also been great to see from a diversity and inclusion standpoint. I started as the only woman on the Revenue Management team, and now we’ve added two intelligent, amazing women. It’s been great to work alongside Daria and Camille, they’ve helped out so much since they started.

What events and conferences have you been to so far? Have you presented at any?

I’ve been to three industry events in person this year — all within the past 3 months. I presented at LiveRez and the Vacation Rental Women’s Summit.

The Women’s Summit was one of my favorites because we got to control the topic, the layout of the presentation, and the dialogue. Since my background is both in the hotel and short-term rental revenue management, I chose to speak about the differences between the two industries, and how vacation rental managers and owners can take advantage of revenue management trends to get ahead. I got to incorporate where I think revenue management is going, the future of short-term rentals, and what our team is working on.

How important is it to you that Beyond supports diversity and inclusion efforts? Have you seen that in action?

It is very important for Beyond to support these efforts because it is important for us as individuals (and as an organization) to see all perspectives. I definitely saw this commitment in action at the Vacation Rental Women’s Summit. A few Beyond team members attended with me, and our CEO, Julie Brinkman, was part of a panel at the event about the career paths of the most successful women tech executives in our industry.

What was a pleasant surprise to me at this conference was how many women of different backgrounds were there and in our industry. All the empowerment and diversity of the women at the event made it memorable.

How does the Vacation Rental Women’s Summit differ from other events you have attended with Beyond?

We heard from attendees about how they got their business through tough times. We heard from panelists about how they deal with stress on a daily basis. We heard about how they decompress after a busy day. You would not hear these questions or stories of life, hardships and empowerment at most other events.

It can be hard to find women in revenue management. When I do, it’s like, hi! You share the same experience and go through the same things that I do! So when I saw all these women that do what I do, I felt that comradery and got to learn from them.

What are your biggest takeaways from the Vacation Rental Women’s Summit?

My biggest takeaway was that events like this are needed in our industry - as are women and people of diverse backgrounds. These types of conferences shape the industry for the better, and I love working for a company that supports these events.

The overall message I got from the summit was that there is a need for women and minorities to be in the industry. There are many of us. We are empowered, and we want to work hard. 

Our Going Beyond series aims to pull back the curtain and show what it’s really like to work at Beyond. Our five core values provide structure for our company decisions, interactions, and work: We Care, We Go Beyond, We Are On The Same Team, We Inspire Trust and We Ship It. If these values resonate with you, then you belong at Beyond too. Check out our careers page for more information and to see open positions: https://www.beyondpricing.com/about/careers