ARDA Inside Look - Issue 4
First Word
President/CEO Jason Gamel
As we prepared for this week's edition of the ARDA Insider, we received the sad news of the passing of Christel DeHaan. Christel was a stalwart of our industry. Her contributions to the timeshare industry are immeasurable, but as important are the contributions she made to the greater good of our society. In founding Christel House International, Christel provided opportunity and hope to children around the world. She set the example and the tone that empowered many to give more, share more, and do more for others. She will be greatly missed, and her legacy will certainly live on for decades to come.
Member Matters
A Personal Reflection on Christel DeHaan
A Life Well Lived
By Howard Nusbaum, ARDA President (2000-2019)
I, like you, and so many in the timeshare industry as well as those involved in addressing poverty for children are feeling immense sadness at the passing of Christel DeHaan. She was truly inimitable. Christel's personal story is compelling – born in war torn Germany, losing her father as a small child, growing up in occupied Germany with a strong work ethic, huge curiosity and generous spirit who then comes to America as a young woman full of promise.
Within a decade of coming to America she and her husband Jon DeHaan started RCI and the rest of this celebrated entrepreneurial American Dream story is well known to all of us in the industry. Her successful leadership and global expansion at RCI followed by selling the company to Cendant (now Wyndham) making her one of America's celebrated business stories. But Christel wasn't done; she wasn't one to rest on her laurels. She began her philanthropical work to advocate for impoverished children.
