Employee Spotlight: Maggie Warner Wisniewski

Maggie Warner Wisnewski has three pregnant cows. 

This may sound like a strange thing for an employee of Morey’s Piers to own, being that we’re a seaside amusement park located at the Jersey Shore, but Maggie is not your typical employee.

“Hopefully Mother Nature will take over when it’s time for them to give birth,” she says. “Because I am not qualified to deliver baby cows!”

There are plenty of other obscure activities Maggie IS qualified to spearhead. As manager of our public relations team, she doesn’t merely liaise with the media, pitch stories or act as company spokesperson. She also wears some unusual hats, like guardian of giant inflatable sea creatures and facilitator of wild belly-flop competitions (stay tuned for more on that last event, coming soon). 

It all started in 1998. Maggie was a 17-year-old kid from Northeast Philadelphia who landed a summer job lifeguarding at the water park. She became instantly enamored with working by the beach and meeting interesting people from around the globe.

“Colleagues used to tease me all the time because I loved it so much,” she says. “They’d tell me I was going to end up a lifer, and I’d say, ‘No, no, I’m going away to school to study film and video.’ Well, 21 years later, I’m still here.”

While Maggie DID earn her college degree (go, Nittany Lions!), she continued working her way up the ranks of the Morey’s company — from lifeguard to aquatic supervisor to water-park manager to, eventually, integral member of our marketing and PR team. She’s been here long enough to see the good (watching families make memories, year after year), the funny (we once wrapped her to boxes of Oktoberfest supplies using cellophane), and the ugly (she had the VERY unfortunate experience of standing next to a contestant in our Curley Fry-eating contest, just as he succumbed to a coughing fit). 

“The wonderful thing about Morey’s Piers is that even as we’ve continued to expand and grow, this has remained a family-run company,” she says. “And that’s very much the heart and foundation of who we are.” 

In her spare time, Maggie is an avid athlete who’s completed two half Ironmans (with another slated for Hawaii in May) and a series of bizarre races. Her first triathlon had her jumping from the deck of the Cape May-Lewes Ferry into the Delaware Bay. And, in November, she and five teammates ran a Ragnar Relay — a 200 mile race from Chattanooga to Nashville for which she had to complete six legs totaling 28 miles over the course of 36 hours. At night, when she wasn’t running through 21-degree temperatures, she was sleeping in the team’s van or — to the awe of her colleagues back in Wildwood — catching up on work emails at 3am. 

“With competing, you work so hard to meet a goal, so race day becomes a reward for all that effort,” she says. “At Morey’s Piers, it’s the same. You work so hard to prepare for an event or new offering, and it is so rewarding to see it all come together and to witness people enjoying themselves. I get so much satisfaction out of making other people happy.” 

Last May, Maggie got married at a ceremony attended by dear friends she’s made over the years at Morey’s Piers. After Christmas, she’ll join her husband and their rescue dog at their farm in western Pennsylvania where, in addition to working remotely for Morey’s Piers, she’ll help raise eight heads of beef cattle, including those three pregnant heifers. (Maggie’s a vegetarian — go figure.) Soon, the couple will add other farm animals to the mix.

“I want pet goats I can dress up in pajamas,” she says.

As for her future with Morey’s Piers, whether Maggie truly becomes a company lifer remains to be seen. Does she think she’ll still be on the piers — coming up with new and exciting ways for visitors to have fun and make memories — at the age of 75? 

“If I was a betting girl,” she laughs, “I’d definitely say yes.”