In Her Words: Susan Leach, Exploring New Horizons
Former corporate exec transitions from corporate world to world traveler and travel advisor
When I was in fifth grade, my dad was transferred to Hawaii for his job with Motorola. The Vietnam War was going on. It was the middle of the school year; I was one of the very few white kids in my class; and I was very shy. No one spoke to me for a couple weeks, which didn’t help my shyness at all, but eventually I worked past it and made friends. My friends were Japanese, Chinese, Filipino, Hawaiian, Korean, or a mix of all the above. It was a very Asian society and culture and I was the minority. It was one of the most pivotal life experiences I’ve ever had, because I learned what it felt like to be different, discriminated against, bullied, and shunned. You don’t forget that feeling. It adds empathy to your character, and after that you show empathy to anyone you meet who is in a new situation or new to the school or new to the neighborhood. After experiences like that, you know how they must feel too.
From Hawaii, I moved to the Chicago area in the middle of 7th grade, which was another awkward time to move. Everyone had made their friends as they approached high school and I was once again the “new kid.” I had to make all new friends in a new school and a new neighborhood. After high school, at the age of 19, I was hired by Zale Corporation and was soon transferred to their national headquarters in Dallas, Texas. Somebody from corporate headquarters saw something in me when I was doing a store opening and said, “We’d like you to come down.” So my dad drove me from Chicago to Texas in my little green Pinto. I called it Minto Pinto. I learned buying skills, inventory control, negotiating, and I met vendors at their silversmith factories and showrooms. Some were traditional salesmen from Massachusetts and others were strict Hasidic Jews from New York. At the age of 20, I was a National Silver Buyer for all Bailey Banks & Biddle stores across the country. I was there for two years, and it was a great experience. But I really felt I needed to get back to Chicago. When I got back, I continued with Bailey Banks & Biddle at the store level and did very well. At age 21, I won the National Buyers of the Year Award, and they sent me on a trip for three weeks to England, Ireland, and Scotland with my sister as a companion, all paid for by Waterford Crystal. We didn’t have a credit card or any international travel experience but somehow we thrived and loved the adventure. We had 50 cents to our name before boarding our plane home from Edinburgh and we split a donut. That’s all we could afford.
“I better stop what I’m doing while I’m on a career high point and go to college,” I thought. I felt God leading me to Concordia College at River Forest, Illinois, to earn a teaching degree. Because I lived in Hawaii, I was comfortable with other cultures and I was empathetic, so I was chosen as the resident assistant for the international dormitory where the college hosted an English as a Second Language school. Every month, new students would arrive from around the world and I’d get them oriented, settled, comfortable, and be their “welcome wagon”. At the end of my senior year, I met a charming, handsome, charismatic guy from Brazil. He was like Antonio Banderas — dark skin, sunglasses, the whole package — and I fell in love. He did too. He spoke no English but who needs words when you have that instant feeling of love?
I was about to graduate, and I had to make a choice between accepting a call to a teaching position in the United States or going to Brazil. I chose Brazil. We were planning on getting married. I met his parents who were both doctors. His family was comfortable, and it was shocking to see great wealth and extreme poverty side by side when I arrived in Recife, Brazil. I got a job teaching English as a second language in a K through 12 expat school, and at the end of the year, I realized it was not going to be the right relationship for the long term. I returned to the United States and about a month or two later, he came to the United States to visit, wooed me, and I got pregnant. Again, I decided that I just could not marry him. His values and mine, which I should have tuned into more carefully and which were dramatically different, were the pivotal factor. I said goodbye to him and carried on with the pregnancy on my own. It was a very emotional, tough decision — probably the lowest point of my life. Back in the 1980s, it wasn’t as accepted to be a single mom as it may be now. Regardless, I went to church every Sunday with my bulge on full display.
I was 29 when Rachel was born in 1986. I was raised in a very conservative Christian family and my parents were very supportive. We lived with my mom and dad initially. I was working as a teacher when I got pregnant, but I could not return to school as a Christian teacher as a single mom. I also couldn’t support my daughter on my school teacher salary. So, I got a job in telemarketing, selling videos to realtors on how to get more listings, how to close the deals, etc. It was a boring, awful telemarketing job, but I learned to talk to people and not be afraid of that kind of cold calling situation. I was successful at it and saved enough money to buy a condo. In 1989, I saw an ad in the paper for an entry level, inside sales position at Motorola. Knowing that my dad always loved Motorola, I applied and got the job. I took a dramatic pay cut to start over. Thanks to my telemarketing experience, I was not afraid to work on the phone with external sales guys selling two-way radios and pagers. I learned all about that technology. In 1990, a year after I joined Motorola, I married Rick who was 36 and I was 33. Both of us had not yet met “the right one” and had never been married before. He adopted Rachel right after we were married, and we knew that we wanted another one between us. Our son Adam was born in 1991.
Over the course of my 21 year career at Motorola, I moved from position to position, from inside sales to training, to another call center opportunity, to corporate human resources where I did primarily employee relations and strategy. In 1999, when Rachel was 13 and Adam was 8, I was invited by Motorola to fill in a critical skill gap in London. We had one day to decide. At that time, cell phones were exploding in popularity and sales growth, so in addition to doing employee relations, I did my first stint in recruiting to hire marketing professionals across Europe. I quickly had to learn HR employment law across many different countries. We traveled all over and loved it. Rick and I took the kids to Egypt, Switzerland, France, and Holland.
I didn’t expect to leave Motorola, but when I was a senior director managing just six people, I was recruited by one of my former team members at Motorola to move to Sears and I made the leap to be vice president of HR operations for Sears Holdings. I’ll never forget that call saying, “Would you like to come to Sears and be my boss?” I was hired to manage all HR systems consisting of payroll for 3000+ stores, recruiting systems, and the HR master database for more than 240,000 employees; and manage a team of 30 employee relations investigators who handled all the grievances and HR issues in the stores across the country. It was a huge move and scary. Payroll was the most daunting. I could only manage that operation with very competent people who knew a lot more about it than I did. After more than four years, several trips to India (which I loved) to manage our transaction partner in Chennai, and enormous daily stress, it drained me. I was lacking “oomph” and energy to handle it all at that point.
From the time I was a teenager, I wanted a log home, and the Sears job allowed me to make that dream a reality. While I was still working for Sears, we built the log home in Michigan where we live today. For a year after the house was built, I commuted to Sears in Hoffman Estates from Michigan. When I couldn’t do that anymore, especially after commuting in “Jesus take the wheel” blizzards on I-94, I resigned from Sears and wound down my career at a local hospital system. I loved my time at the hospital in Michigan and then retired in 2018.
As a retiree, I enjoyed not having a schedule and not getting up at the crack of the egg. One of the things I decided to do was learn to weave. When I was on a mission trip to El Salvador years earlier, I saw this man weaving on this big loom, and I promised myself that I would learn to do that someday. I bought my first loom on Facebook Marketplace and took a class. Now I have four looms. There’s a triangle loom that I can use to weave triangular pieces, a monstrous floor loom with different shafts for more detailed, intricate patterns, and two smaller looms that sit on the floor and can be taken outside. From the time I bought the first loom, I’ve woven 300 custom pieces — mainly women’s shawls, mother/child wraps, and blankets. I have no time anymore, but for a while I was taking custom orders. I have a Facebook page called “Susan’s Woven Love” that features my weaving. I still like to always have something on the loom because it brings me so much happiness.
After retiring from a long, corporate career, I received numerous phone calls from my friends asking me for travel advice, because they know I’ve traveled all my life to many places around the world, both for business and pleasure. I would give them advice and say, “Oh, and you could go book it with Marilyn, my travel advisor.” And then I thought, “Well, wait a minute. Now, something’s wrong with this picture. I think I could do this.”
I started doing some research and found Cruise Planners. I love that it’s a woman-owned and led business with a great reputation in the travel marketplace for many years. On March 17, 2023, I came out of retirement and bought into the franchise, and I can tell you, I’ve been busier than I ever thought I would be. I was booking trips very early on while I was still learning and getting set up. When people heard I was a travel advisor, they said, “Of course you are. What took you so long?”
As a travel advisor, what I try to do is provide “value add” so that my clients always feel loved and supported. Right now, I have people traveling who are texting me from a cruise ship in Italy because they are sick and they had to cancel a private tour tomorrow. I’m there to be responsive to them. We don’t just do cruises, even though the name of the company is Cruise Planners. We do private tours, rail journeys, safaris, all-inclusive resorts — you name it. We cover any form of travel.
Ninety percent of my business is really from family, friends, and referrals from family and friends. I also get business when I travel. I don’t overtly solicit. It comes up organically in conversation over dinner as you’re getting to know people. I’ve done close to $2 million in bookings since I started. My husband has said, “Susan, you need to stop marketing yourself. Don’t get too big. You’re too busy.” He wants me to be home more. He usually travels with me, but he can’t keep up. I am going to Norway this January on a Viking cruise to see the northern lights, and then on a custom land tour to Australia, New Zealand, and Tasmania with two good friends, but he has his limits … I don’t.
Everything in my life, even though at times it didn’t feel like it, was an absolute blessing. In retrospect, as I look over my shoulder, I see God carving this incredible pathway for me that I just feel I don’t deserve. I was never an extraordinary student, or standout in anything. I paid my way through college and then Motorola helped me with my MBA. I did very well because I was there for a purpose in each case … not taking the opportunity for granted and striving to do the very best.
Belle Curve Stories is about women living life with grit, grace and growth. What do those three words mean to you?
Grit means having gumption. Even when I know I’m going to feel uncomfortable doing something for a while, I’m going to stick to it until I can do it. Weaving was like that for me. It’s a very intricate left brain, right brain, crazy hobby to take up as an old lady, but I’m doing it and loving it now. If you don’t understand something or have never done it before, just dive in and figure it out and learn it. Be resourceful. Ask questions. Lean on other people’s strengths. Don’t be afraid of anything new. Managing payroll was my biggest test of grit. I had to learn intricate technology processes that drove direct deposits, pay calculations, and bank routing and that was daunting to say the least. It had to be perfect every two weeks or else lives were impacted.
Grace has a deep spiritual meaning. I am only here by the grace of God. I am so thankful that He stuck with me and continually pursued me when I was trying to live life by my own rules. In the 1980s, I was single, nine months pregnant, and went back to church even though people looked at me disapprovingly. I have been blessed more than I could ever imagine with my life, my children, my grandchildren, and my husband. Traveling is just the icing on the cake. God has been very good to me despite my deep valleys and shame that I felt and experienced in my life.
My whole life has been about growth. I haven’t stayed in the same job or the same place, not because I’m a drifter or I failed. Every person I met and every job I had grew me in a new and better way. I even picked up valuable competencies that helped me qualify for greater positions in the piddly, little jobs that in many cases I did not enjoy. I’m so grateful for the growth from all those experiences building on each other. You never forget those little things. My path is not the traditional one but I wouldn’t change one thing.
If you could go back in time and give advice to your 25 year old self, what would you say?
When I was 25, I was insecure with my abilities, even though I already had some big jobs by that time. I’ve always been self-conscious about my looks or my weight, and I was always bullied about my red hair and freckles as a kid. I never blended in with the crowd. Given my experiences, I’m more comfortable in a multi-cultural environment than a homogenous one. Given that, I will always be different. My advice is to be comfortable with who you are. Let that shine through, whether it’s in your looks, your dress, or your personality. Don’t try to hide who you are or blend in with the crowd or copy others. Stop worrying about trying to be like everybody else. Just be who you are and embrace who God made you. You are unique, one of a kind, and loved by God!
I would also say, “Be very careful with who you choose as your life partner.” Find someone that is truly a soulmate, who you truly feel like you could be your whole self with and never have to shy away from who you are. Find the person who aligns to your values and loves you unconditionally. I found that in my husband Rick. He became a father when he didn't have to accept that “package deal”. He’s absolutely amazing, and I’m so grateful that he came into my life. We are still madly in love. It was worth the wait. Don’t ever settle. God has a plan for all this.
As told to and edited by Teresa Bellock and Sandra Ditore.
Susan Cox Leach, 68, is an entrepreneur and travel advisor, as well as a retired corporate executive. She and Rick, her husband of 34 years, travel frequently for business and pleasure. Their adult children, Rachel and Adam, are both married with children of their own, and the family enjoys gathering at Susan and Rick’s log home in Dowagiac, Michigan. In her spare time, Susan enjoys crafting handwoven shawls and blankets. Visit Susan’s Cruise Planners website here and Instagram @cruiseplannerssusanleach. You can also visit “Susan’s Woven Love” on Facebook to see more of her weaving work.
Such an incredible story and a beautiful woman.