A decade ago, when Kristen Hodge played college softball at Tennessee Tech University, she could run from home to first base in just 2.5 seconds — about the time it takes to say “January, February, March.” She could also circle the bases, home-to-home, in just 10 seconds.
To say she was fast is an understatement. At 5-feet, 110 pounds, she was electric on the base paths.
Now, the 29-year-old vice president of operations at Chattanooga’s SVN Second Story Real Estate Management is still in a state of constant motion helping manage one of the city’s fastest growing commercial and residential property companies.
Movement has been a constant in Hodge’s life. Starting at age two, Hodge moved around the United States with her mother and U.S. Marine Corp step-father.
“I was moving every year of my life,” Hodge said in an interview in her company’s sparkling office complex in the old Loveman’s building in downtown Chattanooga. “I have lived in seven different states, 21 different homes.”
During her teen years, she was chasing a Division I softball scholarship, which is how she landed at Tennessee Tech, her parents’ alma mater. But after one year on the team, with limited playing time an uncertain future, she decided to change her priorities.
“I was told I was too small,” she says. “It was like my life’s dream was achieved but then crushed very quickly.”
Instead of doubling-down on softball, she quit the team, changed her major from education to business and joined a sorority, where she quickly ascended to a leadership role. (She still works as an alumni volunteer for her college sorority, Alpha Delta Pi, overseeing marketing and recruitment for the chapter at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga.)
Hodge says this period of her college experience taught her a valuable life lesson: Sometimes change isn’t just advantageous, it’s necessary.
“By making that decision (to leave softball), I ended up going back to college with a fresh mind,” she says. “…I ended up taking that energy and channeling it into something that has taught me life lessons.”
In the sorority, Hodge says she got to help manage an organization with 140 women, and learned business skills she still uses today, such as budgeting and marketing. Ironically, her title in her college sorority was VP for operations, the same title she has in her current corporate job.
After college, Hodge worked for a time for a tanning salon chain, and later began working in the leasing office of an apartment complex in Nashville. Later she moved to Chattanooga and became a leasing agent for Bluebird Row Apartments near the Chattanooga Choo Choo.
She made the move to Second Story about five years ago, and says she has the most job and personal stability she has ever had in her life. Because of all the relocation she had done in her life, Hodge says she began feeling a little antsy at the three-year mark with her present company, but the impulse passed.
“I’ve had a few job title changes and I’m growing with the company,” she says. “(I’ve learned) my life doesn’t have to be uprooted by change. I’m just finding that change can be experienced in my workplace, now.
“… This company is doing really cool work, and I’m thankful for being part of that.”
Kristen Hodge
* Age: 29
* Job: VP of Operations, SVN Second Story Real Estate Management
* Hometown: Knoxville, Tennessee
* Education: Tennessee Tech University
* Family: Husband, Conner Hodge
