Mia Kyricos, senior vice president and global head of wellbeing for Hyatt Hotels, was presented with the Leading Woman in Wellness award at the Global Wellness Summit in Singapore last week.

Kyricos, who has a long and distinguished career in the spa industry, joined Hyatt last year, and has been a champion of bringing wellness to everyday life for guests at Hyatt’s 750 properties worldwide, as well as the hotel giant’s 110,000 employees.

In her time with Hyatt, she has established an annual ‘Day of Gratitude’ at Hyatt Hotels, where guests and employees are provided a customised ‘Gratitude Gram’ postcard to send to someone for whom they are grateful, with Hyatt covering the postage. Delegates at the Summit, which was held at the Grand Hyatt Singapore, were also each given a ‘Gratitude Gram’ postcard.

Kyricos was given the award on-stage at this year’s Summit by ResortSuite CEO Frank Pitsikalis, who got emotional as he referred to her as his “Greek soul sister”, and Nancy Davis, GWS chief creative officer and executive director.

A congratulatory video from Kyricos’s twin sister Gina was shown beforehand, along with another from Mark Hoplamazian, CEO of Hyatt Hotels, who thanked Kyricos for the impact she’s had on both the company and himself personally in bringing wellness to the forefront of the conversation.

Before working for Hyatt, Kyricos served as president and CEO of Kyricos & Associates, a boutique advisory firm providing guidance to wellness-driven hospitality, tourism and healthy lifestyle companies. Prior to that, she was chief brand officer at Spafinder Wellness, where she co-founded the Wellness Travel Awards programme, which was issued annually across 40 countries at the World Travel Market.

She also held leadership roles at Core Performance, the workplace wellness division of athletes performance firm EXOS, and at Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide, where she created six international spa brands and signature wellness experiences.

Kyricos also serves as chair of the Wellness Communities Initiative, a non-profit educational foundation that she helped to found on behalf of the Global Wellness Institute, and last year, she was a co-chair at the 12th Global Wellness Summit in Italy.