Lynn received the 2025 Women of Western Wake Lifetime Achievement Award at the annual Forum, held in September at the Umstead Hotel & Spa.
“I am sleeping really well at night,” says Lynn Minges about the peace she’s found since retiring from her role as CEO of the North Carolina Restaurant and Lodging Association (NCRLA) in October of 2025. “I wake up in the mornings, and I don’t have a long list of things that I have to get done that day,” she says about stepping away after 13 years leading the NCRLA and 35 in the hospitality industry.
It was in 2023 that Lynn notified the NCRLA executive committee of her intention to step away, some six years after her husband retired (and then proceeded to wait patiently for his wife to join him). So, with intention, the woman who had spent decades giving everything she had every day to her career and to North Carolina’s premier hospitality association started to pull back and adjust mentally so that when she retired in 2025, she could, as she describes it, “be successful in my personal life.”
Lynn is also a firm believer in going out when you’re on top. The association is currently the strongest it has been in its 75-year history, and the NC hospitality industry is thriving. “I think that’s a good time to hand over the reins to the next generation of leaders,” she says, adding, “I feel really good about both leaders who are inside the association and leaders around the state who can help ensure that our industry continues to grow and thrive.”
Indeed, even after more than a decade at the helm of one of the state’s largest and most influential trade associations, Lynn’s self-described passion for the hospitality industry remains intact. “The thing that has always inspired me,” she says, “is that people who work in restaurants and hotels, people who own restaurants and hotels, or who work in the tourism industry are some of the most dedicated, resilient, and creative people I know. They wake up every morning in service to others.”
Throughout all her working years, Lynn was always an employee and never self-employed; it isn’t money or personal success that has motivated or bolstered her. Instead, she explains, it’s waking up every day trying to make the world better for other people” and the feeling of “going home and knowing that I’ve done the very best I could do.”
When the 2013 Women of Western Wake honoree received the Women of Western Wake Lifetime Achievement Award in September 2025, Lynn reassured young leaders that there is no quick pathway to success — no elevator to the penthouse. “Literally, there is no elevator,” she again insisted when speaking with Cary Magazine a month later. “You have to take life one step at a time. Your professional career, my professional career, has just been one step at a time.”
Reflecting on her professional journey, Lynn also expressed gratitude for the opportunities she was given and for the people who encouraged and supported her. She shared that as her retirement drew closer, her friends asked what she was planning to do with her time. Lynn’s response? “I’m going to celebrate birthdays and anniversaries on their real day.” She explains that although her husband and family members learned to celebrate in other ways, they grew accustomed to spending important days apart because of her travel and work.
Lynn admitted that she’d been so driven by accomplishments every single day, by getting things done, by moving the needle, and by setting goals to encourage, nurture, and develop teams that she found the prospect of retirement “a little scary.” But she also believed herself to be “ready for this next phase of life,” saying, “I think I’m well prepared. I’ve accomplished a lot both professionally, financially, personally. … I’ve raised a family. And so now, as a good friend told me, ‘This is your time.’”
Back in May of 2008, Lynn Minges graced the cover of NC Magazine.
When it comes to filling that time, Lynn says, “I’m sure I’ll develop some new hobbies and new friendships and new opportunities to do new things.” As a grandmother, she looks forward to assisting her two daughters with their children. Also, and true to Lynn’s spirit and abiding love for this state, “being able to just get in the car and explore some of the places close by” which, despite her extensive travel, she’d “never been able to visit at a leisurely pace.”
State and national parks are also on the itinerary for the North Carolina native who has long believed that “we’re blessed in North Carolina” and fortunate to benefit from “an industry that creates amazing experiences from the mountains to the coast, beautiful places to visit, extraordinary dining experiences.”
Lynn believes the pandemic illustrated the resilience of the industry. “Life happens, and life happens for a reason,” she says. “It would have been nice not to have had to suffer through all of that … but we did, and I think we’re stronger and better for it.”
Although covid, as she described it, “tested every leadership skill, every personal skill I’ve ever developed in life,” the NCRLA “went to bat for our industry. We told their story.” By working hand in glove with policymakers at all levels on both sides of the aisle, a lot of restaurants in the state continue to exist — “They tell me that,” Lynn shares. “And I’m really proud that we did come together in meaningful ways.”
As far as her personal legacy is concerned, Lynn’s hope is for people to “know I gave 100 percent every day … that I didn’t leave anything on the table. There’s nothing else I could have done. And I’ve done the best I could do every single day. And then cumulatively, that it has led to a successful, rewarding career of public service and giving back to an industry that I love.”
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