It's Personal Stories, A Hospitality Podcast

Dr. Erinn Tucker-Oluwole, Dept. Chair, Hospitality & Tourism Management, University of Maryland

• David Kong

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Erinn shares how involvement in an association taught her about true leadership and the importance of increasing listening skills and developing patience.  She also explains why learning her bosses’ priorities and preferred ways of working, early on in a job, helps advance her career – and that it’s more important to be effective than to be right.  Erinn explains how creating her own platform gave her the ability to be seen and perceived differently – and confidently advocate for herself.

Lan Elliott:

Hello and welcome to D E I advisors. My name is Lan Elliott on behalf of D E I advisors, and today I am really thrilled to have Dr. Erin Tucker, Ulu Ole as our guest. She is someone that I have admired from afar for quite some time, so I'm really happy to have her on and to be able to talk to her. Let me tell you a little bit about her. She is the department chair and associate professor of the Hospitality and Tourism Management Department at University of Maryland, Eastern Shore, and she's also the co-founder of the D M V Black Restaurant Week. So without further ado, welcome

Dr. Erinn Tucker-Oluwole:

Erin. Thank you so much, LAN. It's so great to be here and so great seeing you. Nice

Lan Elliott:

to see you too. We're going to jump right in. We have about 30 minutes and a lot to cover'cause I know I could talk to you for way past 30 minutes. But let's start with your career. Erin. I know you've had a really interesting career and it's also recently come back full circle for you. Can you share some of the inflection points in your very successful career and if there was a particular factor that contributed to your success?

Dr. Erinn Tucker-Oluwole:

Absolutely. I'm originally from Chicago. That's my hometown. I'm a south sider and I say that because the three things that you never discussed in business, which is sports, politics, and religion, it was absolutely on limits growing up. If you grew up in Chicago, you know these things, you have to have other opinion. My mother was really civically engaged so that. Politics that, was right there. My father definitely was was really big into, in my church and in business community. I had that area growing up. And then of course, sports. Look, I'm a Bears Bulls and it's a White Sox fan for, that's just, it's part of me. So why I think that's really important is because those things actually shaped me. It shaped my comfort in understanding what people really. What's important to people. And it also really has been able to provide me, interestingly enough, with my professional journey. So when you mention about inflection points, I definitely think for me going to college I went to undergrad at Florida a m University in Tallahassee, Florida. So that took me from Chicago to to the south. And some people are like, oh my gosh, why are, why are you going so far? Definitely one of the. Biggest, most impactful places to one go to school, especially at that part of my life. Really beginning to shape what I do to be important. I think another inflection point was actually when I finished there, I didn't take that traditional corporate job. I followed my passion to the chagrin of those parents. And so I went back to Chicago. I was an intern. My first job outta school. I was an intern for a very small sports agency, a sports management company, but. I learned so much. Definitely I think working for someone who's a great boss I didn't really pick that up until later. I think working in golf, when I decided that I wanted to work in sport and decided to go and get my master's in sports administration I worked in golf and a lot of people said, there weren't really any women, definitely not people of color. But the decision to go into and work in golf really shaped my career. I absolutely loved it. And I saw the world very differently and that brought me to hospitality. To be completely honest with you, because sport is, golf is a sport, but really it's hospitality. When you start considering private clubs and members and and hospitality and service it's just that's where really what golf is. And I think doing that, I think teaching, getting a PhD, going over to Singapore and teaching over there, and then eventually leading me to where I am at University of Maryland, Eastern Shore as the chair And it's phenomenal because they, it's the only historically black college that has the p g of America program that's housed in under hospitality. So it just, as you said at the beginning, it just all came full circle.

Lan Elliott:

I did not realize we had in common living in Singapore, because I grew up there until I was 11. So really, another thing. Yes. We'll talk about that another time. Let's talk now a little bit about continuous growth, because we find a lot of leaders mention curiosity as a big part of their path and also the need to develop new skills throughout your career. Is that something you found? Along the way. Is there something you stumbled on that you said, you know what, this is a skill that at this point in my career, I need to develop a bit more?

Dr. Erinn Tucker-Oluwole:

Absolutely. I think there was definitely a time where I didn't learn this skill from on the job. I actually learned it by actually being involved in an association and, chairing a committee. And that eventually led to being on the board for that organization. And it was interesting because the way that it the leadership. It was held was that you would get voted in as like the vice president. It was a three-year commitment, so you were voted as vice president, then you became president the next year, and then you would be immediate past president. And what I learned very quickly was that the responsibilities that I had as a vice president were more logistically based. But when I became president, it wasn't about that anymore. It was really about how I could help the board being part of the board move forward, and I was still in that logistical mindset. And really, having to take a, to learn the hard way, but ultimately understanding in that role what leadership truly is. Because it was not about me. It was really about what did I need to do in order to help move this this board forward, move the federation forward, move the entire organization forward. The fact that I really learned that without being on the job has really, I think, helped. In the leadership skills. So I think ultimately that experience, it taught me how to listen more, increase my listening skills, listening to once again what people want. And it also allowed me to check in on my patients. Just, I'm so used to like wanting to get things done, ahead of time. Having patience and allowing grace. Were definitely two things that I picked up from that and I think that's really helped a lot in growth.

Lan Elliott:

Absolutely. Yeah. I definitely found in a leadership role that one of the most important things was patience was to slow down. And I used to say, sometimes you need to slow down so you can bring people along and then you can go faster later.

Dr. Erinn Tucker-Oluwole:

Absolutely. I love that. It's funny that you even say that. I was listening a Ken Chana is one of my like, I've probably I remember I was in school when he was c e O of American Express and in a podcast that I listened to. Yeah. I have, like he said, it's a really like fake, like really popular quote for me right now that I'm living. And he says, you practice being, you have to practice being a leader like it, and it's at times of crisis where you really show. Where you really stand and how you can lead, people through. And so definitely I think in the growth avenue, and I think we're all right now or anytime, within our careers, going through those steps of crisis that's when you really see your leadership.

Lan Elliott:

That's for sure. That's really when you have to dig down and hopefully you've learned some of those things that will serve you along the way. Yeah. Let's talk a little bit about taking risks because you don't get to where you are today without taking a number of calculated risks. Can you share an example of success in this regard that helped you, how do you prepare yourself mentally to take a chance on something?

Dr. Erinn Tucker-Oluwole:

Sure. I definitely think that being intentional is so important. It's so critical. I would say there probably isn't one thing, but I would definitely say that moving to going after an opportunity that's been presented by moving to a town or a city where I didn't know anyone. Okay. You mentioned Singapore. Many things I heard about. I'm so happy I moved there. Going into golf, why did I select, that one? Oh, you don't. Huge risk. Just go for the opportunity. What allowed me, I think, to really take those risks, even though I didn't know anyone in it, is that like I'm, I did the research, like I would go and I would research everything now. We've got so much information, but I think like really doing a research, really feeling like that I was informed I think really helped prepare myself for that. The single biggest lead. I think that one of the risks that I took was really creating D M V Black Restaurant Week as a co-founder with both two partners that I have. And why that was such a risk really for me was the fact that one, I, this is something that I, that kind of went about doing, not by myself. I had to trust the people that that. That I, worked with in order to make this happen. What led to D M V Black Restaurant Week really was the fact that I was actually working with these two individuals on workforce development issues for hospitality in the DC area. That's what we came together. We loved education, we loved our industry. We saw there was a need. So we started to really start putting some things together for young people. And then what happened in the. Spring of 2018, there was an incident that happened at a Starbucks in Philadelphia where there were two African American, males, a gentleman. They were called on by the manager, and that it made like national news and why That was really why that affected me was because I lived down the street from that Starbucks when I was a professor at Temple. So I knew exactly where this location was, and I just was so curious as to how it escalated during that timeframe of that spring of 2018. There were. There were a lot of memes that were going around. Barbecue Betty, coupon Charlie. It was kinda like this treatment. Of African Americans within these public spaces. And a lot of these spaces were restaurants and hotels. And then I read like an article I guess the tipping point is that all and all during the same time where it was like, there was an article that I read and he said where are the black. Owners and we're the black chefs. And I'm sitting there going what are you talking about? Where are they? They're everywhere. And especially within DC but I realized there wasn't a platform for them. So I started to do some research and I saw that there were these other black restaurant weeks in the country. And so when I asked Tate and aj, I said, Hey, is there a black restaurant we care? And they were like, no. And so I remember Tate specifically said why don't we focus it on the region, on the D M V, which is the. That's what we call it here here basically. And I said, sure. I said, I said, so should we do it? And they were like, yeah. And so that's what we did. And we were very intentional when we did come together, what we saw differently from, I think the other ones was the factor of, we saw it was more marketing and not really thinking about the sustainability, the longevity of business owners, especially within restaurants. And so we made sure that we wrote a mission statement that really. Defined what it is that we were doing, and that is that our mission is to help support and sustain black-owned businesses within the hospitality and restaurant community by providing professional development and education while creating an ecosystem. And so with how we do that is that we serve as a conduit between small business owners. And government resources. And so we live by that. And it's tough with a name especially with the with the name and it's in a, the word weak is in it'cause people think, oh, we only do this for a week. But it's actually it's, the entire year that we actually end up doing this. And serving at that and now it actually took probably about three years before now people really see that we live our mission. Not why are you not doing this event and this event, but being more intentional about what we are doing. Yeah. I love

Lan Elliott:

that you started with the mission and you said, what? What is the goal of what we're trying to accomplish? And it's not just one week, it is this overarching, Progress that you're looking to achieve. And also chefs like Kwame who started in DC and now have a national platform. He's getting a lot of buzz in New York right now. So wonderful to see some of the really talented chefs in the DC area make it on the national state.

Dr. Erinn Tucker-Oluwole:

Absolutely. He was. And also he was recognized this year in Valencia, Spain at the World's 50 best restaurant awards as emerging. Just amazing.

Lan Elliott:

Yeah. Yeah. I have to say I moved to Europe, but DC actually has some of the most amazing restaurants of anywhere, so absolutely wanted to move on to learning from setbacks. Because, Sometimes the, these are the times when you actually learn more than you when things go right. Have you had an example of a time when you had a career mistake or a setback and you really learned something as a result of that experience?

Dr. Erinn Tucker-Oluwole:

I remind myself every day that I probably would not be in the position or have the experiences that I had if it wasn't for mistakes or setbacks. But at the same time, I think I'm practicing living in, in the present that I don't try to spend too much time when things that I messed up one in the past and. The harder part actually is not spending so much time thinking about what the future's gonna be but just really being present. But I will say this, I will say that I did not spend enough time really getting to learn and understand what was important to my boss. Talk more about that. Yeah, very important. And I think that what I've been. At a higher level or then, when I've had other things happen. Yeah, sure. This and that, but there we, there's a lot that I learned in working in all of these small companies, large companies, corporations, about what was important to the company. But I did not take enough time that to really learn and understand that my boss was the single biggest indicator of where I would be perceived within the organization. Now, it didn't necessarily always mean that my boss had the biggest power, or had the most power or decision making in other hirings, but they definitely had the biggest influence. And so if so if we know what the company cares about, but we wanna go about it two different ways, that's not gonna be effective for me and my position. Instead, it's nice when I know that my boss is a Trekkie like me. That sounds absolutely insane on a c e O web podcast. It is single handedly one of the biggest things. It's really important if my, my boss maybe likes the early morning in order to send out emails and directives. So I can just keep in my mind, oh, okay. I know I have all these things to do today, but what's the priority for today? So learning how they prefer to work and spending that time early on when I when I would start from place on that. I think that, and now learning that it makes a huge difference. So I will say that it wasn't the one thing that's a setback, but sometimes in life I realize that it's much more important to be effective, not necessarily be right. That's such a

Lan Elliott:

profound statement and something that you learn over time. I think especially when you go from being a student to being an employee where you think, okay, having the answer is the important thing, but really it's so much more effective. As you said, if you are in alignment with your boss and you agree on strategy, how you're gonna do something, how your ways of working, that they align with how your boss likes to work, it's going to make a big difference in, in how. You're perceived by that person and how effective and how much they are going to advocate for you going forward. Absolutely. Absolutely. I love that. Great lesson. One of the things that we discussed from time to time at D E I advisors is support systems. Who do you turn to when you need advice? Or perhaps even a personal board of directors. People have different ways of finding support when they need it. How do you identify who you include in your support system and what types of things do you rely on them for?

Dr. Erinn Tucker-Oluwole:

It'll be interesting to, to see when I listen to this in 10 years I say right now I'm on chapter three. Of my journey. Every, some people call it phases, some people call it life cycles. I call mine chapters. I'm way too literal. And this is chapter three. Chapter one and two. I will tell you probably my board of advisors were, was almost 100% men. And they were not men because I didn't trust women. They were men because it was just dang on. Convenient. When I really think about they were there, there was a whole bunch of'em. Some of'em I would get advice from others that, just blow off. But it was so many of them there. For chapter three, I'm here to tell you 100% of my board of advisors are women. I. There are women, because I think of a few factors. One there are women who are in leadership positions now where it's not that the mid leadership before you get to the senior leadership is very important. So I say I, I have and how I go about picking them is that I have, I literally intentionally called on other department chairs. With who I admired and saw when I decided to take this position and all of the dope ones were women. I, interestingly enough a previous boss that I had, Who she was my boss and actually went on to another university. She's an associate dean now. Served as a phenomenal sponsor and I go back to her now because sometimes it's nice to have these people we're in dean positions, people were outside of that, but it just happens to be like, she literally called me for lunch and said, this is what you need to be doing. I, we never had a conversation like that when she was my boss. But now she's on my board of directors and we do check-ins for that. And so I'm excited about that. I'm excited for that. I a board of advisors I think is a really great term because it's not mentors. Advisors have been phenomenal for me because they have the experience to answer the question that I need, because you've been in this seat, or you're in the seat right now, or you've made the mistake or you've had success. And so a lot, having a lot of advisors is really important. Mentors is a different thing, but but the advisors, it's, it has been absolutely crucial. So in this space right now, interestingly enough, the most effective the wimp, the people who are doing it, and really being there to serve as if I'm sending a text at 5:00 AM and I know they're asleep but I'm just having a mental dump that they don't hold that against me. And they go, you're doing all right. And they're all women.

Lan Elliott:

That's phenomenal. I know in my earlier chapters, I didn't always feel like I could ask for help and support. I felt like I had to do it all myself, and I do think I would've done better if I had asked for support, but I also limited myself by only looking for women. To support me. And coming up in real estate, it was mostly men and you were really smart to reach out to the people who were around you. They happened to be men, but there are so many amazing male allies, and I have had amazing men who have helped me in my career and helped further my career. But I didn't think of them as much as I was yearning for women that I could reach out to. But I love the idea of finding the people who are there and asking them for help.

Dr. Erinn Tucker-Oluwole:

Absolutely, and especially for a lot of women of color, and I definitely don't speak for all self-identified black or African-American women. We do not ask for help. We bear through it. It is generally you have different spaces. For that, but you do not ask for help when you are, especially in the world of work and business. And I'm seeing that differently now. I'm seeing definitely a different level of, I think empathy and listening and understanding now. It's not viewed up anymore necessarily as a weakness or vulnerability. Maybe not, maybe that's not the right word. Weakness, more vulnerability now their lanes. But it's still very much there. It is.

Lan Elliott:

I think we're all still learning about vulnerability and it's still controversial. I brought it up at the dinner table Does is vulnerability, a strength and that led to a lot of controversy, but I do think it's a great way to connect with people as allowing yourself to be a little vulnerable and asking for help as well. Absolutely. I wanted to talk about advocating for ourselves. It's along the same lines and there's a common generalization that women don't do a good, great job always of advocating for ourselves. I know I was much better at negotiating on behalf of my team or my company than I was doing the same thing for myself. I don't know. My bosses may disagree with me, but I always felt like I was more confident advocating on behalf of others. I know that you are a go-getter and you don't let things stand in your way. How do you do it and what advice would you have for people who are struggling to find their voice and ask for something they really want?

Dr. Erinn Tucker-Oluwole:

As I mentioned, I, I am an, I'm a just a ferocious, just I like to take in a lot of content, so I use the word research but research can be so many things. I'm always reading, I'm reading inside the industry, but I'm also reading outside, everything from magazines, listening to podcasts as we talked earlier movies, fashion, so the inspiration. So I'm always doing that, that, that research. I really, started to really advocate for myself when I really created my own platform. I did not ever feel like I was really being heard. So I was in a scenario professionally where I just, and there's the topic of being, of imposter syndrome and one of the things that I was going through it, and imposter syndrome for me really liked in the place where I just didn't, where ultimately I really didn't feel like I was being heard, but I didn't know that. I just thought it was. Questioning my skill level, what's questioning like. Everything that I've lived through, nothing is happening. And so really when I decided to create my own platform which ended up really being a D M V Black Restaurant Week, which actually comes in under kind of another business I used to have before, but creating my own platform gave me a lane to really highlight my strengths. And it gave me that ability to be seen and perceived differently. And so finding my voice really came from that. And it's interesting because, as you just mentioned, I advocate for small business owners, so I'm advocating, I'm. Having created a platform where I'm even advocating for myself and in our business, I'm advocating for other business owners, but the reality is that experience has helped me advocate for myself because I had to know what my value was. I had to be comfortable with not thinking that it was, I'm boisterous or anything else or bragging, but just understand that this is the value that I bring and really embracing my journey. As I mentioned, my journey from the beginning, it was if. If I did not have that context, I would not have been able to have discussions, especially. In 2020 where everyone was listening and trying to make some sort of get their minds around how we are approaching black Lives matter and things such as that. And in conversations even with women. And I was very comfortable in, in really articulating my journey. I would say, and this is not an exhaustive. Perspective, but I'm very comfortable with saying that three institutions that really in the United States, that are at the really foundation of black lives within this country are the black church, the historically black college and black professional organizations, fraternal, et cetera. I'm a member of all three, so I'm pretty clear. But the reality is that it's those institutions that are made up of so many different African Americans, black immigrants, socioeconomics, labor, all of those things that still kind of house. This is one of those avenues that I'm able to take that and be able to own that, to then be able to sit down and say, okay I'm advocating for this because I was actually asked this in a, in, in, one particular time where I had to advocate for myself as related to a promotion. That the lens that I bring and what I can show is the fact that this is, this has been part of my journey as a journey. This is the impact that it's made, and therefore I should have paid more money because of this opportunity, because I'm, but I'm also asking for more. I'm asking to do more of those avenues. Yeah. But, and I would say that, and I'm very clear in saying that it was not because of, The the demographic background. It was because of the value and the impact that I showed by that and why this was important and this is what the organization really needed. I love the way

Lan Elliott:

you put that. Absolutely. Thank you for that. Now, I know you are a very dynamic speaker, and our audience knows that by now as well, and you've spent your career speaking to students. You've done a lot of that. But public speaking can be a lot of different things. It could be on a panel, it could be on a podcast. Presenting to a group at a meeting,

Dr. Erinn Tucker-Oluwole:

how

Lan Elliott:

important is the skill of public speaking and elevating one's career? And is this something that came naturally to you? Were you always confident or do you have to prep? And if you have to prep and psych yourself up, what? What do you do?

Dr. Erinn Tucker-Oluwole:

Yeah. To care for. No. Abso absolutely it's important. Public speaking is the most important because you want to be heard, but you also want what you're saying to really resonate to your audience. And I will say growing up my mother would make me memorize Easter and Christmas poems that also we would do this at our church and. All the kids would read their poems off of a of a card. And my mother, I would be mad. I would be mad all every time. She would make me memorize it and then after memorize it, she would then make me say, what do you feel about it? What do you think this is really saying? And then inflect it. I know that sounds very basic, but it allowed me to become comfortable with public speaking. I still get nervous. But it allowed me to get pumped at a very young age. And then in high school I joined theater. I love the theater. The key to theater is really projecting one's voice without straining your throat. I think it's a phenomenal skill. I would never be on Broadway, but, but it was something I loved, I enjoyed, and so I think that helps. Which then once again goes into being able to be heard by others. So I use a notepad to jot down my ideas, not what I'm saying, but just the idea because it's really important when talking to people. You use two premise points and one, and get to the point. So premise 0.1, say your statement, premise 0.2, say your statement, and three. Bring it home. It's too hard for an audience to understand too much at one time. And so that's actually something I learned to do. So I think that's really important and I think that it allows you to know prior to what your audience wants. And then it allows me, I think, really to have been a good teacher because once again, it's still an audience. And a lot of people in wanting to be teachers, which is why I think I've been really fortunate in hiring professors and hiring good teachers is because everyone comes in because they say they want to give. But the power of teaching really is being able to understand and listen to what it is that they want and what their expectations are, and delivering it into a way that's inspiring.

Lan Elliott:

That's so true and so important for the next generation. But I love that you started so early, getting up there and doing the poems, and I love the questions that your mother asked you. What does it make you feel? Yeah. And then the inflections in there so important that you could use that Yeah. For almost any speaking engagement that you would have. Absolutely. As I suspected, we are running short on time, so I have a couple last quick questions for you that I wanted to ask. The first one is one of our favorites at d e i advisors, which is what advice would you give to your younger

self?

Dr. Erinn Tucker-Oluwole:

Yeah. I would tell my younger self to expect more from myself. I spent more time trying to survive and not thinking bigger, so it's already. It's already there for you. Just ask more questions. Strive to be, strive for more. And don't be afraid necessarily about just just surviving but really be able to thrive.

Lan Elliott:

I love the idea of dreaming bigger and aiming higher. Absolutely. Yeah. And one last question for you. You've offered so much great advice and I was wondering if you have one final nugget of advice that you could offer our audience some something. Keeping in mind that the mission of d e I advisors is around empowering personal success. What advice would you have for women and underrepresented groups that are looking to advance their careers?

Dr. Erinn Tucker-Oluwole:

Definitely know and own whatever topic or industry that you're in, be the best subject matter expert. But the success is really going to come from how you treat. Your colleagues and the people around you treat your colleagues well. Treat the person that comes into your office and, cleans your garbage can every day. It will help in ways that you would never think. Of course we see the bigger individuals, et cetera. But really treat your colleagues well and listen, even if they don't sometimes because that, that truly is going to help sustain you more than you think in order to get to in order to continue the success that you are, that you're achieving. I love that.

Lan Elliott:

Okay. Wonderful. Final advice. Thank you so much, Erin. I so appreciate you being on and sharing your journey with us.

Dr. Erinn Tucker-Oluwole:

Thank you so much Lan.

Lan Elliott:

And for our audience, if you would like to hear other great interviews from industry leaders, I hope you'll go to our website to ei advisors.org. Thank you.