This past March, our team gathered in upstate New York for a D*S retreat to brainstorm new content ideas and have some much needed face time since we all work remotely with one another. We were lucky enough to stay at Hasbrouck House in the historic hamlet of Stone Ridge, an 18th-century Dutch Colonial mansion […]

This past March, our team gathered in upstate New York for a D*S retreat to brainstorm new content ideas and have some much needed face time since we all work remotely with one another. We were lucky enough to stay at Hasbrouck House in the historic hamlet of Stone Ridge, an 18th-century Dutch Colonial mansion turned boutique hotel. For our team of design lovers, the property was pure magic from an aesthetic standpoint — unique wallpapers, brass fixtures, original fireplaces, marble, and sumptuous textures blended together — but we left the trip even more in awe of the attention to detail for us as guests. We were particularly impressed with how all of our needs seemed to be anticipated before we even expressed them, surely a tall task for a smaller operation. Orchestrating all of these details behind the scenes was Hasbrouck House’s General Manager, Ruth Hevelone. Ruth’s story is one that career-switching hopefuls dream of — she jumped ship from the corporate world into an industry she didn’t know much about: hospitality. There was no backup job, no prior experience in the field, just her blinding desire to change her lif...