Raised in the Texas Hill Country, Judy Young, CEO of Coastal Mississippi—the convention and visitors bureau for Hancock, Harrison, and Jackson counties in Mississippi—has been a destination cheerleader since she was just a wee toddler. At 3 years old, as the youngest American swimmer competing in an official age-group division, Young was invited to inaugurate the pool during a promotion at the new Lyndon B. Johnson State Park & Historic Site in Stonewall, Texas, by being the pool’s first swimmer. “That was my introduction to the industry and being an advocate or ambassador in travel and tourism,” she says.
Most recently, Young served as vice president and director of convention and visitors bureau Visit New Braunfels in central Texas for 25 years, where she helped craft campaigns she calls “guerilla marketing at its finest.” During one such effort, she helped orchestrate a media event where a group of elected officials from the state of Texas and representatives from Travel Texas (the state’s tourism department) jumped into the Comal River wearing painted inner tubes to kick-start the reopening of the New Braunfels area after a destructive flood.
In 2022, Young moved to The Magnolia State and began her role as CEO of Coastal Mississippi. She says the move made a lot of sense—her husband is a Mississippi native and she sought a position with a waterfront destination. In addition, she notes, “It had all the same assets and opportunities to grow that I had in my previous position, and that was really important to me. And it had generational investment.” One of her highest-profile current projects is enticing a host hotel for the Mississippi Coast Coliseum & Convention Center in Biloxi.
When it comes to fully supporting meeting and event planners, Young is passionate about delivering exactly what she says she will with regard to her destination’s events offerings. “We make the promise [of what our destination provides] when we make the sale, and then hundreds of front doors and different vendors and people deliver the experience we have promised,” Young says. “I think that’s what makes the meeting and convention industry so much like gumbo. It takes all the ingredients for it to work.” And to ensure the gumbo of destination management turns out just right, Young says she chooses to lead by example. “I will never ask anyone to do anything I will not do myself,” she says. “And I hope that communicates to my partners and our team that every single person is just as important as the next.”
