Page 40 - BusinessWest December 8, 2021

Star
Lynn Gray Has
Built a Career in the
Ever-changing World
of Shopping Centers
Lynn Gray has truly come full circle, from attending the grand opening of Holyoke Mall as a newborn to her role as general manager there today. In a career spent
in the shopping-center world, she has seen plenty of evolution and a few major challenges as well, the pandemic being the latest and perhaps most daunting. But current customer traffic and interest in available space tell her this is an industry with plenty of life, and she’s passionate about helping individual businesses succeed within it.
WBy Joseph Bednar
hen Lynn Gray was two weeks old, her mother packed her up and took her
on her very first outing — to the grand opening of Holyoke Mall in 1979, the center where she now works as general
manager.
“How cool is that, right?” she asked.
The mall has certainly been a family affair; her mother
worked there from its opening as an office manager, and her grandmother would later come on board as a customer-ser- vice manager.
“When I was 15, I started at the customer-service desk in the middle of the mall selling gift cards — well, back then it was gift certificates,” Gray recalled. “So that’s how I got into the shopping-center industry.”
It’s been a journey that has taken her across the Northeast and down the East Coast, but mostly at Holyoke Mall and Hampshire Mall, where she was general manager from 2016 until earlier this year, and is still serving in an interim role at the Hadley complex while a replacement is found. And, hav-
Lynn Gray went from selling Holyoke Mall gift certificates at age 15 to running the facility as general manager.
Women in Business
Mall
40 DECEMBER 8, 2021
WOMEN IN BUSINESS
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