Immigrant Resilience

A lot of leaders talk about resilience and the need for grit and determination. Can you tell us about a story that defines a moment of resilience or persistence in your own life?

Sure, I mean, I'll go all the way back to my immigrant family, and when we came to the States, my parents worked extremely hard to try to create a better life for us. When I was 14, we decided one of the best ways we get ahead is try to do our own business, so when I was 14 years old, we sold our house, we took every penny we had and we bought our first motel, one in Alexandria, Virginia, moved right into the manager’s apartment, and it was a tough time. I think both from a personal standpoint, I think I was in middle school at that time, switching schools, living out of a manager's apartment, knowing the importance of our family business was a time, and I'm going to date myself now, it was I think 1979, I think interest rates were close to 19%, and so it was a really tough time but I knew everything we had, everything was at stake, every penny we had was in that property, we had no option but to try to make it a success and working really closely with my father and kind of helped him build up that business is something that even though years later, I had other kind of very formal backgrounds both in education and work environments, I always go back and and say most of what I know about business in terms of cash flow, economic profit, how you treat people really came from those early entrepreneurial days, and those are skills I've taken with me on many large-scale businesses ever since, so I wouldn't trade, even though it was a difficult time, that experience for anything. It really helped kind of create who I am and afforded me to get through both tough times as well as have that focus to be able to continue to drive forward.

Did your parents have any background as entrepreneurs or businesspeople?

They didn't. My dad was a lawyer and worked for a larger company, my mom was an accountant. Now, for full transparency, she did keep her day job in case our thing didn't work out that well.

Smart move.

I think that was part of the joy of it, we learned together, we created that business together. I remember working with my dad as he expanded that business over the years, and then when he wanted to do nonprofit work, that was the business I sold and my parents have lived off that ever since, so I take great pride in that time early kind of in my life, being able to kind of learn and spend time with my parents to help build that out.