David Kong, former president/CEO, BWH Hotel Group, didn’t take long to find his new venture. A longtime advocate for diversity, equity and inclusion (DE&I) in the hotel industry, he recently founded DEI Advisors. The non-profit organization is dedicated to empowering personal success by sharing insights and learnings from industry leaders in an effort to help more women and minorities advance to leadership positions.
“I was fortunate enough to be invited to many CEO panels at industry conferences and at these panels, I would often be the minority representation,” said Kong. “We all know that it’s not right, it’s not good for business and it doesn’t reflect the diverse customer base that the industry has.”
Lan Elliott chats with Ashlii Johnson, who discussed the lack of Black leaders in the industry.
He knows from experience that these groups have many obstacles in their way to the executive suite.
“I know, as an immigrant, the way that I was brought up was heads down, do a good job, work hard and you’ll be recognized,” said Kong, who got his start in hospitality as a bus boy and dishwasher. “But, I found out the hard way that you actually have to advocate for yourself to get ahead here. So, there are just many, many things and many challenges that are unique to minorities and women that others may not feel or know about.
He noted that while many hotel companies have stepped up their DE&I efforts, nobody was addressing a key component to success—self-empowerment. That was something he, himself, had to work on while advancing his his career.
“I know as a minority, the way that I thought about myself as I was climbing the ladder, we sometimes short-change ourselves and just don’t know how to advocate for ourselves or find mentors and establish networks that could help our career,” Kong said. “So, I thought that the one niche that nobody is actually working on is about self-empowerment. How do we empower ourselves to achieve our own career aspiration?”
He brought in industry veterans Rachel Humphrey, who had retired from her role as EVP/COO of AAHOA in August 2021, and Lan Elliott, cofounder/principal, Acacia Hospitality, as principals. Both women are very involved in the effort to help women advance in the industry.
“[Last year], there had been a tremendous number of CEO announcements that I felt easily could have reflected a more diverse executive leadership than they had, and in that moment decided that this might be an area that I could be impactful,” said Humphrey. “What [David] is doing is a huge piece of the puzzle of what I want to be doing. I want to see women tremendously deserving of those roles, and if personal empowerment is a piece of that puzzle…it just aligns perfectly with what I want to be doing with people I want to be doing it with.”
Although Elliott may not have the name recognition of her colleagues, she has more than 20 years’ experience in the industry, and has seen that there is a lack of female leaders firsthand.
“I came up on the real estate side of the business, so I spent most of my career as the only woman in the room,” she said. “So, I wanted for my next act to focus more on giving back and helping other women progress in their careers and seeing more women in leadership.”
She has also been heavily involved with Castell@College, an offshoot of the Castell Project which helps female hospitality students see their career opportunity, but was looking to learn more about why women don’t find their way into executive boardrooms. After a conversation with Humphrey and Kong, she was on board with DEI Advisors.
Advisor interviews
The initial concept for the organization was to do video interviews with some C-suite executives—such as Geoff Ballotti, Mark Hoplamazian and Pat Pacious, who each serve as president/CEO for Wyndham Hotels & Resorts, Hyatt Hotels Corporation and Choice Hotels International, respectively, as well as Heather McCrory, CEO, Accor Hotels, North and Central America—as well as other hotel industry executives and some from outside hospitality.
They are known as “advisors” because that is their role in their video—to advise viewers on different ways to empower themselves, while also describing the paths that took them to where they are today.
“They all bring something to the table,” said Kong. “They all have perspectives, learnings and advice that [can be]really beneficial to anyone listening to it.”
Humphrey knows from her own experience how important it is to take in what these industry experts are providing in their interviews.
“I’ve been incredibly fortunate in my career to be on the conference circuit and to be in private meetings with high level executive leadership in the industry, but not everybody has that type of access,” she said. “I can remember one of the first panels I saw was Krissy Gathright, Melissa Mayer and Mary Beth Cutshall [all of whom are advisors].I had never seen anyone like them talking like they were talking, and it really impacted me and my career.”
Each video is available for free, and links and bios can be found on the DEI Advisors website. They can can also be viewed directly on the organization’s YouTube page.
While most viewers will recognize the CEOs and other hotel industry leaders among the interviews, there are a bunch of executives from other walks of life that bring in a different perspective. One that Kong pointed out is Renie Cavallari, inspirational speaker and author of the book “HeadTrash: The Leading Killer of Human Potential.” The former Best Western CEO thought she gave so much valuable advice that he interviewed her twice.
“She gave a lot of very helpful tactics and challenges to handle ‘head trash,’” he said of the concept that represents a negative belief you may have about your abilities, your products or yourself. “Especially for women and minorities, many of us have head trash because we tend to shortchange ourselves. Sometimes, we just tell ourselves that because we are different, we’re inadequate and not as qualified in some way. How do you change that mindset? Because self-empowerment starts with knowing how to change the negative mindset.”
Another interview that Kong highlighted was his chat with Nicolas Graf, associate dean, NYU’s Johnathan M. Tisch Center of Hospitality.
“He [talked about]why students aren’t choosing hospitality as a career after they graduate, and offered excellent advice on how we need to change that mindset,” said Kong. “[He said] we have to explain the opportunities that this industry has to offer because a lot of people just think the industry is about working at the front desk or housekeeping.”
Elliott said that she learned a lot about diversity in hospitality during her interview with Ashlii Johnson, executive director, Marriott-Sorenson Center for Hospitality Leadership at Howard University.
“I wanted to understand her [opinion on]why we don’t have more Black leaders in our industry, and the challenges that she’s going to face attracting some of the top students in HBCU programs to her program,” Elliott said. “It was just helpful to understand some of that context. I wouldn’t have understood why there’s not more interest in our industry, but there are other contextual things that we don’t really understand.”
Other African-American executives are able to tell their views on the issue as DEI advisors, like Tracy Prigmore, founder, TLTsolutions and She Has a Deal; Clara Carter, founder, Women in Tourism and Hospitality International (WITH); and Peggy Berg, founder, Castell, an AHLA Foundation Project.
In another interview, Elliott was surprised by a stat that Juliette Boone, cofounder/managing director, AETHOS Consulting Group, cited from a study.
“[It found] that if a hiring firm or a recruiter presents one diverse candidate among a slate of candidates, only presenting one diverse candidate means that it’s very unlikely that that person is going to be hired,” Elliott said. “It’s something like an 89% chance that person will not be hired.”
There are more videos to come. Stephanie Linnartz, president, Marriott International, and Mitch Patel, founder/president/CEO, Vision Hospitality Group, are mentioned on the website as “coming soon” and “Keith Barr [president/CEO, IHG Hotels & Resorts] is coming out in the middle part of the month,” said Kong. “Keith has an incredible schedule, so we are fortunate to have him.”
The next phase for DEI Advisors is turning the videos into podcasts to be streamed via Spotify, Apple Podcasts and other podcast distribution channels.
“The third phase we’re working on is how to turn this into training material,” sad Kong. “How can we—with all the learnings that we’ve gathered through these interviews—pull out the main themes the sound bites to illustrate the points and offer the very valuable learnings and advice that these interviews are actually going to be able to offer.”
DEI Advisors is also part of the Women in Hospitality Leadership Alliance, a group of 19 organizations with the same goal: advancing women to leadership positions in the hotel industry. Humphrey is the founder of the alliance and said it will “provide a closed forum where the organizations can collaborate with one another and amplify one another’s messaging.”
“We’ve been meeting regularly sharing what everyone is working on and seeing how we can help each other,” she added. “At the end of the day, we all have the same goal, which is to elevate women in leadership and to give everybody in hospitality a clear path to wherever they want to end up.”
