Meet Devon Sloan, who picked her Tucson hotel job more than 15 years before she got it
Devon Sloan of Oro Valley spent her whole career in hotels. On a work trip in the early 1980s to the new Sheraton El Conquistador, she decided she would work at that hotel and retire in Tucson. In 1999 she was hired there.
Sloan was born in Columbus, Ohio, and moved to Pittsburgh when her father got a job there. She lived in Pittsburgh until she graduated from college. The family had two homes there. The second, on a corner, had two front doors: one opened into the den, where the family watched TV, and the other into the living room, which was for her parents’ guests. The children were not allowed in it. Her father planted a little tree at each house. On a recent visit she found both trees huge, which impressed her, since her father had two black thumbs.
In college she studied religion, planning to become a youth director at a church. Churches then were opening coffee houses where teenagers could gather. During a summer at home, she asked the minister at her church about starting one, and he said absolutely not. She decided the field was not for her, but she was two years in, so she finished the degree. She never used it.
Instead she went into hotels. At a Sheraton in Seattle she started in sales, persuading groups to book their meetings at the hotel. Once a group signed the contract, another department, convention services, ran the event. She moved over to convention services because she didn’t want to sell a meeting and then hand it off. “I wanted to be a part of it, and make sure that the coffee breaks got there on time and that the VIP was actually put in the Presidential Suite, that kind of thing,” she told Tucson Daily Brief in a recent in-person interview.
In the early 1980s, while she was still in sales, the Seattle hotel sent its salespeople to a training session at a new property, the Sheraton El Conquistador in Oro Valley, which opened in 1982. The training started the Tuesday after Memorial Day, so Sloan and her husband came down for the holiday weekend to see whether Tucson really was sunny. They did every tourist thing they could. When she drove him to the airport that Monday, they made a plan. “We’re gonna move here. I’m gonna work at that hotel, and we’re gonna retire here.”
It took until 1999. In between they came back in different seasons to see what summer, fall and winter were really like. When the resort had a position, she was not ready to move, and when she was ready, it had none. In 1999 it hired her as director of convention services, with three people in her department. The resort became a Hilton in 2003. Sloan said she welcomed the news, though the trade journals had been full of controversy about the takeover. Today it is El Conquistador Tucson, A Hilton Resort, on Oracle Road.
At the resort, she worked with each group’s meeting planner, the person who organizes the event for a company or association. The first thing she asked was what the meeting was meant to accomplish, and how she could help them get there. Many groups wanted more than a place to hold sessions; they wanted to give their attendees an experience.
Her proudest event came from one of those planners, a client who brought the same group back to the resort several times. Around 2010 or 2011, in what was to be the group’s last year there before it rotated to another region, he wanted a ballet performance set to a Coldplay song at the closing banquet. The two dancers had rehearsed somewhere else and did not see the stage until that afternoon. It was set up for the group’s speakers, not for ballet, and it was smaller than the dancers needed. “I could see them talking to each other like, ‘Okay, how the hell are we gonna do this?’” They tried a few moves and left, saying they would be back. She was sure they went somewhere to practice a smaller version. “He took my hand, and he said, ‘It’s gonna be fine. It’s gonna be fine. We’re gonna do good.’” After the performance, “he and I looked at each other, and we both had tears in our eyes because they were perfect.” She said it sounds small next to the bigger events she handled. “But that really mattered to both of us.”
She retired in Tucson, as planned, and wanted something to do. She calls herself an introvert who could sit at home and read all day. She saw a blurb in The Explorer newspaper about a meeting of the Oro Valley Historical Society and went. The society is based at Steam Pump Ranch, which she sees as where Oro Valley started. It is run entirely by volunteers and funded by donations and grants. The town owns the ranch, and the society rents the space. She would like more volunteers, especially people in their 30s and 40s, for computer work, fundraising, and as docents, the guides who show visitors around. New volunteers shadow experienced ones before working on their own. Volunteer openings are listed at ovhistory.org.
After 20 years in Seattle, the best thing about living here, she said, is that she is not cold all the time. She loves a sunny day; the only thing she doesn’t like is the snakes. One of her favorite people to do things with is a nephew who moved here from Seattle as a teenager and has taken to the desert. He knows which mountains are which and teaches her about the trails.
Her favorite spot is Sweetwater Preserve, a trail she calls peaceful and easy to hike. She also likes Empire Ranch in Sonoita, one of the oldest ranches in the area, now managed by the Empire Ranch Foundation and the Bureau of Land Management. The ranch is open every day, and she likes walking down by the river and the cottonwoods. When people visit, she takes them to the patio at Hacienda del Sol, the way her parents’ visits to Seattle always ended with dinner at the Space Needle.
She won a lot of awards over her career, and she was proud of her work at the time. Looking back now, she said, the awards don’t feel that meaningful. What she is proud of now is that she, her brothers and her sister are close and stay in regular touch.
Her advice to younger people: “It’s important to speak your mind, but do it kindly. Think of the other guy. How is that message going to be received, and just stop for a minute and think, is there a better way to say it?”
Nicholas De Leon interviewed Devon Sloan in person on October 15, 2026. Deepgram Nova-3 transcribed the recording, Claude Opus 5.5 drafted this profile from the transcript, and code checked every quotation word for word against the transcript. Nicholas De Leon reviewed and edited it with Claude Opus 5.5; published at 8:56 AM MST on October 23, 2026. Read more about how this is made.
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