At just 22, Joanna Sowers found herself immersed in the vibrant world of Las Vegas hospitality, taking her first steps at The Light Group, a company then managing over 20 iconic venues. Her earliest project, Alibi, became her “baby”, a venture that demanded balancing nostalgia with innovation, where retro concepts met the cutting-edge energy of the Strip. Joanna quickly realized that hospitality marketing was not just about creating experiences but about orchestrating them with precision: sometimes letting big ideas flow freely, other times grounding them in data to spark the next creative breakthrough.
Over the years, Joanna has specialized in “alterations”, the art of refining, adjusting, and enhancing every touchpoint to transform ordinary interactions into unforgettable guest experiences. She thrives at the intersection of structure and creativity, ensuring that every campaign, digital initiative, and in-venue experience is measurable, impactful, and enduring. For Joanna, the future of hospitality lies in this interconnectedness where a guest’s first impression might come through a screen, yet the memory lasts a lifetime.
From Social Media Enthusiast to Hospitality Marketing Leader
Joanna’s journey into digital marketing began with a fascination for social media and the ways people connect online. That curiosity quickly evolved into a deep passion for mastering emerging technologies. Her first foray into hospitality marketing came at The Light Group, a major Las Vegas hospitality company with over 20 venues at the time. It was there that she gained her first experience in digital strategy and discovered its power to shape unforgettable guest experiences.
When The Light Group was sold to Hakkasan Group, Joanna chose to follow founder Andy Masi as he launched Clique Hospitality. This decision proved pivotal, allowing her to grow alongside the company and transition from a focus on social content to leading marketing for more than 30 venues across the country today.
Joanna’s leadership is guided by core values of work ethic, creativity, teamwork, and integrity. Having started at an entry-level position, she believes in leading by example and never asking the team to do anything she wouldn’t do herself. She places great emphasis on teamwork, ensuring that every voice from seasoned marketers to new hires is heard, recognizing that some of the best ideas often come from fresh perspectives. Creativity drives her approach, with a constant focus on pushing boundaries, experimenting, and surprising guests with innovative experiences.
A formative lesson in Joanna’s career came from her mentor at The Light Group, Lauren Fredriksson, who encouraged her to see her ideas through even when they were raw or unconventional. Today, Joanna fosters that same freedom for the team, allowing them to explore and express their creativity fully.
Integrity remains at the heart of her leadership philosophy. Joanna strives to create an environment where the team feels supported, safe, and empowered, believing that when people thrive, exceptional work naturally follows. These principles form the foundation of her leadership style and continue to guide the growth of Clique Hospitality’s digital presence.
Redefining Guest Experiences in a Digital Hospitality World
For Joanna, creativity and data are not opposites, they are partners. At times, she leads with creativity, letting big ideas flow freely; at other times, she relies on data, using insights to spark the next concept. The key, she believes, is flexibility: allowing room for innovation while ensuring that decisions are supported by evidence.
Opening new venues exemplifies this balance. Each venue becomes a passion project for the team, a new “baby” to nurture. A notable example is Amaya Modern Mexican inside The Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas. The marketing effort, led by Elina Arzumanova and digitally supported by Hailey Hilliard, was inspired by a research trip to Cabo, where they observed coastal Mexico and crafted a brand story around a woman they saw on the beach. From the venue’s name to its grand opening party and elaborate invites, the vision was theirs. Joanna’s role was to help package these ideas in a way that founder Andy Masi could fully understand and appreciate the scope of their creativity.
At the same time, Joanna ensures that all initiatives are trackable and measurable. For her, the sweet spot lies between gut instinct and analytics. In hospitality, delivering exceptional guest experiences requires ideas informed both by trending data and an intuitive understanding of what people do not yet realize they desire.
Empowerment is central to her leadership philosophy. Joanna views the as both marketers and consumers of nightlife, restaurants, and events, making their insights invaluable. By giving team members ownership and room to execute their ideas, she fosters creativity while keeping strategies authentic to the customer experience.
What excites Joanna most is the opportunity to grow and innovate. In hospitality, limits are self-defined, and each day offers a chance to reimagine how people experience dining, nightlife, and entertainment. Digital marketing serves as the bridge between vision and reality, enabling the testing of bold ideas, scaling them rapidly, and connecting with guests in ways that feel personal and relevant. From crafting brand stories that exist online before a venue even opens to using analytics to refine engagement strategies, digital allows the team to be both dreamers and doers.
On a global scale, hospitality transcends geography. Guests from anywhere can discover venues before they even visit Las Vegas or San Diego, and brands can inspire travelers across borders through digital storytelling. Joanna believes the future of hospitality will be defined by this interconnectedness where a guest’s first impression may begin on a screen, but the lasting memory is created in the experience itself.
Crafting Unforgettable Hospitality Experiences
One project that stands out in Joanna’s career is Alibi Cocktail Lounge inside ARIA Resort & Casino. Back in 2013, during the pre-opening campaign, the team committed to a bold and playful concept: hypothetical alibis. Visually, striking artwork replaced recognizable facial features with written alibis, creating a cheeky, mysterious, and instantly memorable brand identity. This imaginative approach transformed an open casino floor space into a highly sought-after destination.
What Joanna finds most rewarding is that even after multiple ownership changes from The Light Group to Hakkasan Group to Tao Group the brand direction remained consistent. The alibis never stopped. At the time, Joanna was only 22, and Alibi was her first “baby.” Even today, she takes pride in seeing those alibis glowing on Las Vegas billboards, a testament to the power of storytelling enduring more than a decade of industry shifts.
Fast-forward to 2023, and Joanna witnessed the same dedication with Wax Rabbit at Durango Resort and Casino. The marketing team, led by Elina Arzumanova and Hailey Hilliard, built the brand around tequila and vinyl records. In an era when digital DJ tools could have been the easier choice, they embraced a retro, nostalgic concept, giving Wax Rabbit its distinctive soul. Today, the venue is celebrated for its record-spun parties, where DJs flip through vinyl crates and guests come specifically for the one-of-a-kind vibe. Watching the team stand by a vision that many deemed “irrelevant” and turn it into an iconic nightlife destination was particularly gratifying for Joanna.
Most recently, Caspian’s Cocktails & Caviar at Caesars Palace marked another milestone. Conceived as a speakeasy where rebellious energy meets refined elegance, Caspian’s campaign from the teaser “Caspian’s Coming Soon” to the grand opening was designed to intrigue and excite. Watching the venue evolve from concept to one of Las Vegas’ most talked-about live music destinations reinforced Joanna’s passion for creating spaces that tell their own story.
For Joanna, mindset is everything. She operates with a growth mindset, staying curious, open, and willing to evolve. Comfort with old practices, she believes, is the first step toward falling behind.
Hospitality moves fast, platforms shift, algorithms change, guest behaviors evolve. Joanna’s philosophy is simple: evolve, or get left behind. She constantly encourages the team to ask questions, experiment with new tools, and explore fresh ideas without fear of failure.
Digital strategy, for Joanna, is never a finished product. It is a living, breathing process. By staying curious and adaptable, she ensures not only that the team keeps pace with change, but that they help shape it.
Balances Innovation, Data, and Team
One of the biggest challenges Joanna has faced is scaling digital marketing in hospitality while preserving creativity, clarity, and culture. When she first started, she was a one-person team managing social media. Today, she leads a team spread across the country, responsible for marketing more than 30 venues. With that growth came the challenge of demonstrating the value of digital marketing in an industry traditionally anchored in offline methods while ensuring the creative spark that defines her work remained intact.
A continuing challenge has been keeping her dispersed team supported, connected, and confident in their capabilities, even when operating across different properties and states. Joanna believes that education should never be a barrier to reaching one’s potential. To address this, she has been deliberate about building clarity in roles, making resources easily accessible, and creating opportunities for shared learning. Regular team trips away from the office provide moments to step back, bond, and align on workflows, technologies, and inspiration moments she views as just as critical as the work itself.
Balancing structure with creativity has also been central to her leadership approach. Joanna understands that rigid processes can stifle innovation, so she fosters an environment where ideas are celebrated first, then carefully shaped into actionable strategies. Her growth as a leader came when she realized that success isn’t about being the smartest in the room, it’s about giving others the support, space, and trust to shine.
Mindset is at the heart of how Joanna overcomes challenges. She emphasizes resilience, adaptability, and empowerment. By leaning on mentors, learning from difficult experiences, and staying committed to both results and culture, she has turned obstacles into opportunities for growth not just for herself, but for the entire team.
For Joanna, adaptability is the most critical skill in the fast-moving world of digital marketing. Leaders must remain curious, flexible, and committed to daily learning. But adaptability alone is not enough; what distinguishes rising leaders is the ability to merge creativity with data and to empower their teams to do the same.
She believes the future of leadership lies in connecting analytics and ideas in a way that drives action. It’s not simply about personal expertise; it’s about lifting the team, creating space for diverse perspectives, and cultivating a culture where innovation thrives. Rising leaders who can adapt, empower, and tell compelling stories through both data and creativity will not only remain relevant they will help shape the future of the hospitality industry.
Empowering Yourself and Lifting Others
Joanna believes that true leadership begins with understanding that you set your own ceiling. No one else defines your limits. Challenges and obstacles are not barriers but invitations to find new pathways. By creating a space where your authentic self can shine, that ceiling becomes yours to define, and the sooner it is embraced, the more unstoppable a leader can become.
Mentorship and allies are critical, but so is carving out your own voice. Joanna credits leaders like Lauren Fredriksson for giving her the freedom to see her raw ideas through a formative experience that shaped her approach to leadership. Today, she works to provide the same space for other women, giving them the opportunity to grow, experiment, and take ownership of their ideas.
Resilience, she emphasizes, is essential in fast-paced, demanding industries like hospitality and marketing. Challenges are inevitable, but when met with determination, they sharpen instincts, fuel creativity, and prepare leaders to thrive under pressure.
Community, too, is a cornerstone of Joanna’s philosophy. She encourages women to build networks, support one another, and celebrate each other’s successes. Simple acts attending an event, offering encouragement, or sharing insights can collectively create an unstoppable force. Leadership, in her view, is not just about the spotlight you occupy, but the spotlight you help shine on others.
At Clique Hospitality, Joanna appreciates the rare opportunity to work closely with founder and owner Andy Masi. She describes him as a visionary, and having the chance to sit at the table with him even as an intern is invaluable. Experiences like these reinforce her belief that leadership is about growth, yes but also about access, insight, and inspiration for the people around you.
Ultimately, Joanna’s message is clear: trust yourself, commit to growth, and keep raising the bar. By doing so, you not only reach leadership you redefine it.
Where Digital Storytelling Meets Unforgettable Guest Experiences
In the next five years, Clique Hospitality’s digital presence is poised to become a true global voice in hospitality. While the venues will remain deeply rooted in their physical locations Las Vegas, San Diego, Chicago, and beyond the ways in which guests discover and engage with them will transcend borders. Joanna envisions a world where digital touchpoints convey the energy and personality of each venue, giving people a sense of the experience even before they step inside.
She anticipates continued innovation in storytelling, blending content, analytics, and emerging technologies to craft personalized experiences that meet guests where they are. From immersive digital campaigns to AI-driven personalization, the future is about more than just maintaining a presence across platforms; it’s about creating meaningful, memorable interactions that inspire engagement and leave lasting impressions.
For Joanna, what sets Clique apart is its culture. The team benefits from direct access to founder Andy Masi, whose vision has shaped some of the most iconic venues in the industry. That access to his creativity, strategic thinking, and passion for innovation empowers every team member, including interns, to contribute boldly. This culture of openness and mentorship fuels experimentation, collaboration, and the kind of creativity that transforms ideas into unforgettable guest experiences.
Looking ahead, Joanna aims for Clique’s digital presence to be recognized not merely for its venues, but for defining the standard of how hospitality brands connect with people globally: authentic, innovative, and unforgettable.
