Meet
JILL CARLEN
ISPA BOARD MEMBER
• GLOBAL DIRECTOR OF SPA CONCEPTS, HILTON WORLDWIDE
JILL CARLEN DREAMED OF BEING A BROADWAY
PERFORMER HER ENTIRE LIFE. She went to school for it.
She performed on a cruise ship after college. And finally in 1996,
she moved to New York to fulfill her destiny.
While Carlen is now the Global Director of Spa Concepts for
Hilton Worldwide and on the ISPA Board of Directors, her first
career took her around the world with famed singer Gladys Knight
on a Broadway tour.
“I was sort of a Janis Joplin type for Broadway,” Carlen says.
“I wasn’t as hardcore, but I was the rocker type.”
Carlen traveled to South America, Europe and Canada, per-
forming everything from Smokey Joe’s Café to Into the Woods.
She was in Las Vegas for six months, and she was part of the last
show at Caesar’s Palace before Celine Dion’s residency started in
2003.
One of Carlen’s roles was associate choreographer. She went
on other tours to assist in the sequencing of the dances. She was
also the understudy for all of the female parts, which helped her
develop some important skills for her second career in the spa
industry.
“[Switching careers]
was baptism by fire.
I learned so much—
all about creation,
execution. I fell in
love with it.”
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MAY 2020