Cypress Cove residents who have had the opportunity to meet Sonia Maher know her as an extremely talented, prolific artist. All of the brightly painted walls of the apartment on the third floor where she and her husband Jim live are covered with beautiful watercolor paintings she has created over the years. She continues to bring creativity and art into her life. There is no doubt that Sonia is a talented artist. However, there is much more to her story.
Born and raised in Cairo, Egypt, Sonia attended American University in Cairo, where she studied economics and business. While in her last year, she had to write a report on a business of her choice for her marketing class. “A Hilton hotel was just opening across the street from the campus,” Sonia recalled. “So I decided I’d do it on hotels.” The people who ran the hotel were delighted to have me there. They put me at the front desk where I was greeting people. I was also checking them in and out.
The hotel managers were impressed with her performance. “They told me I had a knack for it and should study hotel management,” Sonia remembered. “I said pray tell, what do you need to study hotel management for? All you have to be is a glad hander.” The managers explained that it was much more involved than that. One of them told her he had been to Cornell University, where they had an internationally renowned hotel management school. He suggested she apply for acceptance.
Sonia found that amusing. “That night, when my father called and asked how things were going at the hotel, I said Dad, you won’t believe this. This is very funny. Can you believe that, in America, they have a university where they teach you how to run a hotel?” Her Dad urged her to find out more about it. When she did, he strongly encouraged her to apply for it.
To make a long story short, Sonia did apply, was accepted, and offered a partial scholarship. Her degree from the American University in Cairo wasn’t in tourism. Therefore, she was accepted as a “transfer student.” She had to take two more years of undergraduate courses before she could earn her Master’s in marketing of tourism. “They didn’t have any courses in tourism at the time. So I had to do independent study with the business school and the hotel school to develop the program that I went through,” Sonia explained. “I ended up writing my dissertation on Marketing Tourism.”
Her degree in hand, Sonia planned to return to Cairo. However, her father suggested she stay in America and get some experience. At the time, the Marriot Hotel group was interviewing. They offered to sponsor her as a work visa student at one of their hotels in the Washington D.C. area. She moved to D.C., bringing her talents and art to a new country, and started a training program.
“I told them I was interested in being in the marketing department. They said they didn’t have any openings but would put me in when a position opened up,” Sonia recalled. “In the meantime, they put me at the front desk, a job for which I was way over qualified.”
When no marketing positions became available after three months, Sonia quit her job and decided to go back to Cairo. Her father insisted she stay because there were more opportunities for women in America than there were in Egypt. As luck would have it, a classmate of Sonia’s, who worked for Intercontinental Hotels, told her that the Vice President of Finance was interviewing. They were having problems related to billing at their hotel in Puerto Rico. They hired Sonia to work with accounting to help fix it. “I worked as an auditor during the day. I worked on the billing at night,” she recalled. While working at night, she met and, subsequently, married her husband, Jim.
In 1976, Jim and Sonia moved to Frederick, Maryland. Sonia applied for the Frederick County Director of Tourism position. She was hired for a six-month trial period and was told what happened after that depended on her. Over a period of 10 years, Sonia built a tourism program. It became a model for the rest of the state, influencing both business and art strategies.
With that accomplished, Sonia decided to start her own consulting business. She began working with international agencies, including the United Nations, to help countries use tourism as a means of economic development. For the next few years, she traveled to numerous countries—Nepal, Indonesia, Monaco, Malawi, and Ethiopia. In some places, she would stay for several weeks at a time.
It was during that time when she developed an interest in painting as a way of capturing the beauty of the many places she visited. “I took water color at the local community college. The teacher told us if we want to be good at it, we have to paint every day. So I painted every night,” Sonia explained. Before long, she started doing some teaching. She began using her organizational skills to help other artists organize, display, and sell their work at their studios without having to rely on art galleries.
After visiting CCRCs in a number of places in Florida, including Ocala and Sarasota, Sonia and Jim chose to move to Cypress Cove in 2023. “We had rated them all, and it seemed like Cypress Cove had the highest rating in all the different categories,” Sonia explained.
Not surprisingly, Sonia has taken an interest in our watercolor class, which is a new art endeavor for her. “I’ve taught watercolor classes on cruises and even in CCRC communities in Frederick,” she revealed. “I’ve been speaking with Perry and Susan Ahrens about it. I was supposed to teach the beginning class but developed some health issues,” Sonia explained. “I did teach two seminars and going to be participating in their classes now. The facility they have here is amazing,” she declared.
By Donna Miceli (Cypress Cove Resident)