Four Atlantic City Casinos Now Headed by Women, Caesars Appoints New Tropicana GM

Posted on: September 18, 2020, 09:37h. 

Last updated on: September 18, 2020, 11:51h.

In an industry long dominated by men, four of the nine Atlantic City casino resorts are now run by women.

Atlantic City casino Tropicana CEO
Jacqueline Grace, seen here in May in Danville, Va. talking about a potential Caesars Entertainment casino in the economically distressed city, is taking her talents to Atlantic City to head up the Tropicana. (Image: Register & Bee)

In the wake of the #MeToo movement and casino tycoon Steve Wynn’s fall from grace, some casinos are handing the reigns to women executives in prominent properties in both Las Vegas and Atlantic City.

This week, Caesars Entertainment appointed Jacqueline Grace as general manager and senior vice president of Tropicana. The Boardwalk resort was included in Caesars and Eldorado Resorts’ $17.3 billion mergers, which was formally executed earlier this year.

Grace returns to Atlantic City after most recently serving as vice president and assistant general manager of Caesars’ Horseshoe Baltimore. She had been with Caesars since 2010. In addition to Horseshoe Baltimore, she’s held positions at Bally’s Atlantic City and Harrah’s Philadelphia.

Prior to her entry into gaming, Grace worked on Wall Street for Merrill Lynch.

Women Take the Lead 

Grace joins three other females in heading up Atlantic City casinos.

Karie Hall has been the general manager and senior VP of Bally’s since March of 2019. Ocean Casino Resort promoted Terry Glebocki to CEO last year, and MGM Resorts named Melonie Johnson its president of Borgata in May of 2020.

Glebocki has already turned around the once-struggling Ocean Casino. The late real estate developer Bruce Deifik, who turned the former Revel into Ocean, was forced to sell the casino in early 2019 to his financiers after the property failed to turn any sort of profit.

Ocean Casino reported a gross operating profit loss of $2.5 million through three quarters of 2019. Under Glebocki, the property turned a profit of $9.2 million in the final quarter of the year.

The #MeToo movement, which helped lead to the downfall of Steve Wynn, resulted in overhauls in the gaming industry. Just months after The Wall Street Journal detailed decades of alleged sexual misconduct by the billionaire, Wynn Resorts named Marilyn Spiegel the President of Wynn Las Vegas and Encore.

Spiegel became only the third woman in Las Vegas history to oversee a Strip casino resort.

Male-Dominated Industry 

The gaming industry is doing its part to bring more women into top executive positions. But no major US-based casino operator has a female atop its executive command.

That’s not especially surprising, as males continue to dominate the top positions of the world’s largest companies.

Of the Fortune 500 companies, only 37 have female CEOs. And that’s the highest number of women chief executives since Fortune began tracking the 500 largest US corporations back in 1955.

Four casino operators are on the Fortune 500 — Las Vegas Sands, MGM Resorts, Caesars Entertainment, and Wynn Resorts — and all have male CEOs.