She Started As a Telephone Operator. Now She Runs the Javits Center.

On any given week, the halls of New York City’s Javits Center might belong to comic-book devotees dressed as superheroes, carmakers unveiling their newest models, or dog lovers sizing up dozens of breeds.

Then the booths come down, the floors are cleaned, and the sprawling, 3.4 million-square-foot Manhattan convention center starts transforming for the next crowd.

Joyce Leveston, an events-industry veteran from Cincinnati, is responsible for making sure it all goes smoothly.

As CEO of the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center, she oversees about 145 events a year and more than 3,000 employees, from electricians and forklift drivers to accountants and salespeople. More than 11% have worked there for over 20 years, and some are related to each other.

Leveston, 61, landed the role in March 2025, becoming the first woman leader of the organization, which celebrated its 40th anniversary this month and has played an important role in New York history. It served as a base of operations after 9/11, supported relief efforts after Hurricane Sandy, and became a 2,500-bed emergency field hospital during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Employee No. 92

Leveston’s path into the convention world began in the late 1980s, when she was a college student and Navy wife living in San Diego. Her then-husband would deploy for six- to eight-month stretches, and she and other Navy wives would meet up across from the site where the San Diego Convention Center was being built.

Leveston watched the facility rise and decided she wanted to work there. She asked her university for help finding a job and became the center’s 92nd employee, working part time at a switchboard. Two years later, after graduating with a degree in communications, she became a full-time event coordinator.

It was the first of what Leveston counts as eight steps from telephone operator to CEO.

“I really wanted to work in sales,” Leveston told Business Insider, adding that she assumed her degree would be enough to get her onto the sales team. Instead, she recalled being told, “You can’t be on my sales team. You don’t know nothing.”

Be excellent at the job you have

Leveston learned the business by pursuing several industry certifications to get as much direct knowledge as possible, rather than going through a traditional B-school program.

That focus on mastering her craft rather than chasing the next title became one of the principles Leveston credits with helping her move up the ranks. She said the telephone operator position was the only job she actively sought out, as she was repeatedly approached about new roles — a trajectory she attributes in part to how she approached each job she already had.

“If you’re going to cook french fries, then be excellent at cooking french fries,” Leveston said. “Aspire to be the best that you can be in the space that you’re standing in, and that will eventually lead to the title.”

She also recommends taking on tasks without being asked, which could be as simple as picking up a piece of paper from the floor rather than deciding it’s housekeeping’s job.

“The bosses will notice,” Leveston said. “They will be calling on you to work on that next project that you didn’t know that they were even building out.”

Don’t be afraid to say no

Getting noticed is one thing. As Leveston’s responsibilities grew, she had to learn to handle the pressure.

After nearly four decades in the events business, Leveston said she can walk into a room and immediately spot trouble, from a blocked exit to a centerpiece that poses a fire hazard. The habit follows her outside work: At restaurants, she finds herself looking for the exits.

Safety has sometimes meant killing a flashy idea. Earlier in her career, she said organizers of a music-industry event wanted Navy SEALs to lower the pop star Michael Jackson from the ceiling of a ballroom for a dramatic entrance.

“That’s not happening,” Leveston recalled telling them. They settled on having the SEALs scale the building and making it appear they had rescued Jackson.

In the events business, Leveston said, leaders have to stay calm when things don’t go according to plan. “There’s always a fire,” she said.

Build a team you can leave

Experience has also taught Leveston not to confuse authority with expertise. Early in her career, she promised a client that a room could accommodate 10,000 people on bleachers without first checking with her team. The setup could support only 8,500, forcing the client to stop selling tickets.

Leveston said she’d been “a little too aggressive” and failed to ask the right questions before making the promise.

As she’s moved up in her career, Leveston said she’s learned to lean more on those around her — and give them room to do their jobs. A travel enthusiast, she sees taking time off as a test of whether she has surrounded herself with the right people. If Javits couldn’t function because she took a vacation, she said, something would be wrong.

“Build your team and trust your team,” Leveston said. “Get out of their way.”