I recently interviewed former P.F. Chang’s CEO Michael Osanloo on my podcast, Thirty Minute Mentors. Here is a transcript of our interview:

Adam Mendler: Our guest today has experience leading two billion-dollar restaurant chains. Michael Osanloo was the CEO of P.F. Chang's and is the CEO of Portillo’s. Michael, thank you for joining us.

Michael Osanloo: Thank you, Adam. Super excited to talk to you.

Adam Mendler: Excited to have you on. You were born in Iran and you moved to the US. When you were four. You grew up in public housing in New Jersey before moving to the Chicago area where you spent time as a teenager. It's where you live now, where Portillos is based. Can you take listeners back to your early days? What early experiences and lessons shaped your worldview and shaped the trajectory of your success?

Michael Osanloo: Yeah, you're harkening back to my roots, so I think I'm, in some ways a very classic immigrant story. We emigrated to the US. When I was a little kid, and my dad was a very young doctor going through a second set of internships and residencies. And we lived in public housing in Hackensack, New Jersey, which still has a fine place in my heart for me. And we bounced around the east coast because he got additional residencies, expertise in different topics. But it was interesting because early on in my household, it's strange how immigrants experience our country differently. So we're from a secular family, we're not religious. And my parents lovingly put me into Catholic schools because the public schools were not very good, and they put me into Catholic schools. And I remember my first year, the build-up for Christmas, all these kids are like, oh, yeah, Santa Claus is coming. Christmas. It's awesome. I know I've been good this year. And my parents were befuddled, they're adapting to a new country. They don't understand this concept. And so Christmas comes and goes and we get nothing. And then it clicked for me, and I realized, like, look, this whole thing is your parents are supposed to pretend to be Santa Claus, supposed to buy you stuff. Because my first day was, man, I was so bad, I didn't even get coal in my pocket. But then I was five years old, and I vividly recall explaining to my parents that you're supposed to pretend to be Santa and you're supposed to buy us gifts. And they're like, what? And I explained the whole concept. I explained all these cultural phenomena, like, tell my dad for Halloween we're supposed to go trick or treating. He's like, you're going begging for candy. I'm like, no, it's not begging for candy, it's this. But I became the cultural ambassador. I would explain to my parents, like, no, you're supposed to do this. This is what we do. And I realized very early on that in my household, we need someone who's going to exhibit some leadership around certain things. My dad is subsumed with being a doctor at work. My mom is taking care of a family. And so I took on a leadership role very early on. And it's interesting you think, how do you learn to think for yourself and figure things out in a much more logical fashion? And I think my upbringing allowed them to do that. So I tend to be very comfortable in highly ambiguous settings where you've got to figure things out because that's kind of how I've had to deal with things my whole life.

Adam Mendler: Michael, I love that. So many great lessons baked into what you just shared, starting off with the fact that for anyone out there, we can all lead, no matter where we are, no matter the setting we're in. You don't need to have a business card that says CEO or manager. You don't need to have people reporting to you. You could be a leader in your family, you could be a leader in your community. You could be a leader in a particular setting. You show up, there's a situation and someone needs to step up, that person can be you. And in your case, you have led at the highest levels today. You lead a highly successful restaurant chain, but you led before you really understood what the word leadership even meant.

Michael Osanloo: Yeah, I think that's totally true. And it's funny the way you just paraphrase it back to me. It's one of the things I tell people who are earlier on in the arc of their career. They say I want a leadership opportunity. And I explain, you have them all around you, everything that you do in life. There are times when you can step up and be a leader. There are times when you can actually be a great follower and help someone else lead. But asking people for leadership opportunities is not what leaders do. Leaders see and seize moments to act like leaders. And there's something that when you have to see opportunities and demonstrate leadership skills, they are manifest in all different aspects of our lives. It could be in your personal life, it could be, are you a leader with your kids and teaching them? Are you leading within your family? Are you leading in your community? If you go to church, are you a leader in your church? Are you a leader in different organizations? But there are tons of opportunities for people to demonstrate a willingness to lead, a desire to lead, and practice your leadership skills.

Adam Mendler: And Michael, what you shared, which is so applicable, leaders seize moments. And when we think about leaders seizing moments, I've interviewed so many of the most successful leaders. It's easy to think about a general seizing a moment in war. It's easy to think about an athlete seizing a moment in the World Series or in the Olympics. But in your case, you were seizing a moment as a little kid in an immigrant family where your parents didn't really understand what Santa Claus was didn't really understand basic cultural references, and you recognized that it was your role to step up and to be a leader.

Michael Osanloo: I like the way you phrase it. I think a more cynical thing would be I was a five year old kid who wanted to make sure he got gifts next year, but I certainly like your representation of it, Adam.

Adam Mendler: I try to find lessons where I can.

Michael Osanloo: Yeah. Amen.

Adam Mendler: You spent the first chapter of your career practicing law before deciding to change careers. You got an MBA, and then you went to work for Bain, where you became a partner. And you then went on and spent time as an executive at Caesars and at Kraft before becoming the CEO of P. F. Chang's. What were the keys to rising within your career, and what can anyone do to rise within their career?

Michael Osanloo: It's a great question. I mean, some people are going to look at what you just described and say, wow, this guy can't hold a job. So I learned early on I was practicing law, and I was doing employment litigation at a really great firm in Chicago. So I was an employment litigator, and I realized that I was not going to be the human being that I wanted to be. Litigation requires it's a very zero-sum. It's winners and losers. It catered to a dark side of my personality. And I saw it. I said, man, if I just keep feeding this side of my personality for the rest of my career, I'm not going to be a happy human being. And I really thought about it, and I realized that I've always liked being in a position where I can help others, where I can make other people successful. I love the notion of being part of building something. And sure, there's elements of practicing law that you can probably do that. It wasn't for me. And it was that self-reflection that helped me make a decision that I want to go and I want to run a business at some point, and I don't have all the skills, and so maybe I need to go get a business degree. But the hardest part of that, Adam, was no joke. Everybody that gave me feedback told me, you're crazy, right? Anywhere from you're crazy to you're an idiot. You're doing really well. You're going to be a partner at a big law firm. Why would you give that up? And my decision was, I know what's going to make me happy. I'm going to march to the beat of my own drum. I also made a conscious decision that the reason I wouldn't take this risk is because of fear of failure. I said I don't want to live a life where fear of failure motivates my decision-making. I don't want to then raise kids who I teach to be afraid of failing. I'm going to lead a life where I'm going to carve my own path where I'm going to believe in myself and push myself, I'm going to spit in the eye of fear. So that was a seminal decision to leave a law career. I invested three years in law school, passed the bar, practiced law for three years. I left and went to business school and incurred a massive amount of debt. But it was undoubtedly the right decision for me because it put me on a trajectory to be a much more complete human being. In my wildest dreams, I would never have imagined I could achieve what I've achieved in my career. So I'm incredibly appreciative and happy, and I reminisce on it fondly. But it did mean making some tough decisions about believe in yourself and don't give into fear.

Adam Mendler: Michael, there's a lot to unpack there. Starting off with the first thing you shared the importance of self-reflection, one of the most important characteristics of the most successful leaders self self-awareness. And before you were able to get on this path, the right path for you, you had to take a step back and recognize that you were on a career path that from the outside, looking in would have brought you great success. The way that society defines success certainly would have brought you great financial success. But it wasn't the right career path for you. It wouldn't have brought you happiness, fulfillment, joy, meaning. Wouldn't have brought you what really matters, something that you shared, which is really important. You went out and you asked people, what should I do? Should I stay where I am? Should I change careers? Should I go to business school? And everyone told you you were crazy.

Adam Mendler: You trusted your gut, you trusted your instincts. You weren't afraid of failing. How do you square the importance of seeking feedback, the importance of going out and asking others, particularly others who you trust, and listening to them, listening to yourself, listening to your own inner voice?

Michael Osanloo: Yeah, it's a great question, and it's a balancing act if I'm being totally honest. Adam I've probably gotten wrong or as many times as I've gotten right. I'm a huge believer in seeking other people's input. My team here, especially Portillos, knows. I tell them I believe in a Hegelian dialectic. So, Hegel's a German philosopher. His theory of dialectics is, you have an idea, you take a contravening idea. So you take thesis, you take anti-thesis, you smash them together, you get synthesis.

Michael Osanloo: A real simplistic way of thinking about it for a guy like me is whatever idea you have, if it's a good idea, it can withstand being pushed, tested, attacked, and then you get to something better. And so I'm a huge believer in seeking out input and getting other people's thoughts on a lot of different topics, personal topics, professional topics. But at the end of the day, you have to own your own decision-making. You have to decide for yourself what's right. And sometimes that means you will listen to a lot of other people and take that and do what other people might suggest. Sometimes it means you listen to what other people suggest and you say, okay, I understand why they suggest that, and they help me see some things that maybe I hadn't thought of, and I'm still going to do what I wanted it. And a perfect example of that was literally the decision to go into business school. What galvanized for me is listening to everybody else is everybody else said, what if you fail? What if this happened? You've invested so much time, and it became clear to me that they're all talking from a voice of fear, of failure.

Michael Osanloo: And they quickly galvanized to me like their biggest issue is you might fail. And I'm going to make a personal decision that I'm okay with that. My worst-case scenario was I go to business school. I try to get a job in a business setting, I'm a complete failure, and I go back and practice law. But those life experiences that I would have gained going to business school, practicing business, undoubtedly are going to make me a slightly better lawyer, but I would have lost a little bit of time. That's the worst-case scenario, which, frankly, is not that terrible. And so it's important to listen to other people's thoughts. But I don't like to conflate that with, you should always do what other people tell you to do.

Michael Osanloo: You should make your own decisions, but you should seek input. And if your thought process is sound, you should be able to withstand all kinds of criticism, and you should be able to say, here's why they think that way and why I feel really good about my decision.

Adam Mendler: And you just gave listeners a great framework for how to make difficult decisions. Start off with the understanding that if things go wrong, what's the worst thing that can happen here? Is this a life or death decision, or is this something that absolute worst-case scenario get knocked down and I get right back up tomorrow? What's the downside here and what's the upside here? Seek input from others, but ultimately trust your gut when you think about what you regret most, is it decisions you've made where you acted on your instincts and your instincts were wrong, or when it was failing to act on your instincts?

Michael Osanloo: That's easy. I have one job performance that I would say I really didn't do nearly as well as I could have, should have, et cetera. I think I'm being charitable to myself. I'd say I actually failed. And I would say the root cause of that failure is I did not do what I knew I should do. I did what my boss wanted me to do and tried to keep that person happy. And I had a lot of responsibility. It was a big job, and the learning for me, and I've adopted that ever since then is, as you get more and more senior in your career, you are judged by the results that you generate.

Michael Osanloo: For whomever? Right? So now I generate results for investors and for a board, and I am judged by those results. It is a foolhardy notion to say, I'm going to do this, this and this to keep people happy, because you might think that, look, they want me to do X, I'm going to do X. And in the back of your mind, you're thinking, I'm not sure X is the right decision, but I'm going to keep people happy. That is not what great leaders do. That is not what great leaders do in any setting. What great leaders do in any setting is they say, what is the outcome that is expected and how am I going to achieve that outcome? I'm going to do my darndest to achieve great outcomes. But the process may differ than how other people would have approached it. And I'm not necessarily going to do every single thing that they want me to do because I'm going to be judged by the outcomes.

Michael Osanloo: The truth is, in business and in life, that's kind of how we're judged, is by generating outcomes up. The process has to be above board. You have to do all things right. But if I've got a board member right now telling me, hey, Michael, we think that you should be pricing the business much more aggressively so you can achieve these outcomes. If I don't believe in that, it's silly to do that. And that's a learning. It takes a level of self-confidence and self-awareness to get to that point. It's really easy to tell someone, you have to do what you believe in.

Michael Osanloo: It's really hard to actually learn that lesson in life and then live by it because it can be scary and lonely when people that you think are, this is my boss. This person wants me to do X. I don't think X is right. I'm going to do y that's a scary world to live in, Adam. But it's undoubtedly the most fulfilling and probably the best way, in my opinion, to operate.

Adam Mendler: Do you have any advice for anyone listening on how to get to that place?

Michael Osanloo: There's a couple of themes. One is, when you're accountable for something, I feel a high level of responsibility and accountability. So I'm very fortunate. Right now. I run an organization with almost 9000 team members who look to me and the team that I work with to make great decisions. This helps people put food on the table, a roof over their heads, save money for their kids. I mean, it's an awe-inspiring responsibility. I take it very seriously, and so it makes me want to work hard on their behalf.

Michael Osanloo: I should know everything about my business. I don't expect to be coddled or spoon-fed stuff. And so there's a theme there which is you want to get to those roles where you have high responsibility, you have to feel that sense of responsibility. You have to be willing to be held accountable for that level of responsibility. And this is motherhood and apple pie. But the minute you start thinking that this is about me, it's my title, then you're off-kilter. When you want responsibility, you genuinely have to care about other people, and you have to think about what's putting them in the best position to be successful. Inevitably, that drives a business to be more successful, but you got to have a level of persistence and diligence and hard work that is there. And then you have to have a very genuine and sincere interest in serving other people.

Adam Mendler: A lot of what you just shared is highly relevant when we think about customer centricity. You went to business school. I went to business school. It's a topic that they talk about in business school. But when you're leading a business, it takes on a completely different meaning, and in your case, leading a restaurant business, it's a totally different ballgame. How could leaders build truly customer-centric businesses?

Michael Osanloo: That's a great question. So there's a lot of people who have talked about the concept of servant leadership. I deeply believe that I saw it work so well in a couple of different settings. Servant leadership makes a ton of sense to me. So if a guest comes to a Portillo's restaurant, their experience, if they have a great experience or a terrible experience, it's not really me. It is the person who took their order, who helped them curate the order, who smiled and was gracious and welcoming. It's the person that they got a hot dog, made their hot dog perfectly wrapped it perfectly. If you wrap it too tight, you destroy the bun. Believe it or not, that's a bad outcome. It's the person who made their food perfectly. In our restaurant, one of our cute things is that expedite when we give you the food, we do it with a fun, quirky rhyme like, hey, 55, look alive. And then it's the person who's managing our dining room. We made sure that there's a clean table and that you were greeted and you were thanked for coming. Those people matter. Those people, those team members of mine, they reflect our brand better than anyone. If I'm being good at my job, what I'm doing is I'm enabling my teams to be super successful, to get all the tools and the training that they need and the resources they need, and they're removing roadblocks so that in turn, our frontline teams can be happy and super successful. Because, Adam, you go to one of our restaurants and you get a great greeting and curated order. Your food is made perfectly, you get a fun push, you sit down at a clean table, you have an overall great experience, you're going to come back and that's going to make my investors and board very happy, which in turn makes me happy, right? So there's this beautiful virtuous cycle. Honestly, in some ways it starts with me and my team, which is we need to set the tone of servant leadership. We serve our teams, who in turn can serve our guests, who in turn can take care of our investors and our board. And it means you need to, at times subsume your own ego. It means you understand that if those team members on the front line are happy and engaged, that's all that really matters. You'll notice I don't call them employees. The etymology of that word is a very old French word that is very transactional in nature. It's like, I pay you to do something, you do something. For me, that is, I believe, very disruptive to the vibe that we're trying to create. I call them team members. We're all on the same team with the same common purpose and the same common mission, and it's to take great care of our guests. And as a leader, we try to do it by taking care of our team members.

Adam Mendler: First, a few key takeaways for me from what you just shared. Number one, every single person on your team matters. Doesn't matter who they are, what their job title is, how much they're getting paid, where they are on the organizational chart, every single person matters. Every single person on your team needs to care. And it's that care that makes all the difference. Whether it's in how the food is being prepared, whether it's in how the floors are being cleaned, whether it's in how the guest is being greeted. In any organization, in any company, that care makes the difference. That's the competitive edge. And then the last thing is leading by example. As a leader, you set the tone, you're the CEO, and every leader in the organization sets the tone. Can't understate the power of leading by example.

Michael Osanloo: Yeah, it's 100% right what I just said about serving leadership. The truth is, a lot of people say this. There's a lot of leaders, a lot of companies that all say the same thing. The difference is, do you actually do what you say you do? Right? Because authenticity is something that is easily sensed by your frontline team members. They know if you're being purely transactional, but just saying the right words versus you're saying the right words and your deeds match the words. People can sense that you're never so smart that you can just fake it and other people won't notice. People notice. So if you genuinely want to succeed at be a servant reader, then you have to genuinely believe it and feel it and live it.

Adam Mendler: What do you look for in the people who you hire and what are your best tips on the topic of hiring?

Michael Osanloo: So one of the pitfalls when people hire is you're looking for specific job skills. We used to do that. I'm a huge believer in hiring people based on their values. So internally, we believe that the values that best represent us are family, greatness energy, and fun. So when we interview people, I want to see family people like, oh, the company can't be your family. All right, fine. Consider it a really tight-knit team. But do you treat each other well? Do you treat guests coming in well? Do you like people? Greatness is hugely important.

Michael Osanloo: Do you want to be great? Are you happy with mediocrity? If so, I'd encourage you to be a guest and not a team member. Do you work with energy? Our restaurants are vibrant, bustling, fast-paced. That's not your thing. You're not going to like it here. And then you want to have fun. You want people around you that enjoy having fun, have a little bit of a cheeky sense of humor, et cetera. So I would always prefer hiring people that check those boxes, because in what we do, we can teach you anything. We can teach you how to make a perfect beef sandwich, how to make a fantastic hot dog.

Michael Osanloo: We can help you grow your leadership skill set. What I can't teach you is to treat each other well. I can't teach you to aspire to greatness. I can't teach you to work with energy. I think values-based hiring is the key to our success.

Adam Mendler: And I think that's relevant. Whether you're running a restaurant or whether you're running a business, in just about any industry, it's one thing if you're looking to hire a software developer, you want someone with a certain set of skills. But taking positions like that aside, by and large, you could teach someone skills. But can you teach someone work ethic? Can you teach someone drive? Can you teach someone whether or not to be a team player? Can you teach someone how to fundamentally interact with others? Can you teach someone whether to aspire to greatness? I'm with you 110%.

Michael Osanloo: Yeah. I'd even push back a little bit. Like, even if I'm hiring a software engineer, I need somebody like that for it. We're going to get some really great candidates. The difference for me is not this person has ten years of experience versus that person's seven. The difference is who better represents our value system. It's do they have sufficient technical knowledge to be effective? And then it's the values that make a difference, right? Culture values. You said it. You look at great organizations in America, whether it's a business. You look at my beloved, beleaguered Michigan Wolverines. Culture trumps everything else. And so great culture, once you've established it, is gold, and you need to make sure that you're nurturing it, you're protecting it. You're not letting cultural assassins into your organization.

Adam Mendler: I went to USC, so I'm going to avoid the topic of college football because that's not exactly a pleasant topic right now.

Michael Osanloo: Yes.

Adam Mendler. But I love what you just shared, and it's a great point if you have someone who applies for an open software developer position, and you look at their skill set and you say, this person is a ten. But you look at their intangibles and you say, well, their intangibles are a three. And you compare that to someone who their skill set might be a six or a seven, but their intangibles are a ten. I love the way that you framed it. Hey, I could get someone from a six to a ten on skills, but I'm not going to get someone from a three to a ten on the intangibles.

Michael Osanloo: Yeah, that's exactly right. That's how I feel. And I've learned from personal experience not to be enamored with tons of experience if the value system isn't there. I've certainly made my share of errors, and I've definitely hired people that I felt like, wow, this person just has so much experience that we can overcome maybe some of the cultural dysfunction. And every single time I've done that, I was wrong.

Adam Mendler: Yeah. It's essential that the people who you hire are aligned with your culture. How can leaders build winning organizational cultures?

Michael Osanloo: I think it's a lot of little steps that create an exponential effect once you have a bunch of them in place. So I'll tell you what we did here. Like, when I came to Portillos, I felt like it's a sleeping giant that has lost its way a bit. And I felt like, there's a culture here, but it needs to be teased out. We brought in some external support to help do a cultural revelation, and they interviewed at the time 8000 people every hourly team member. We asked them, what does Portillo stand for in your mind? We had a group of about 80 people come in for two days to talk through all the feedback that they gave. And so when I shared with you, Adam, that our values are family, greatness energy fund, I love those. But I especially love those because those are not my words.

Michael Osanloo: Those are the words of 8000 people who describe themselves that way. And so we were able to tease out what our values stand for. And it's not me and a bunch of middle-aged executives sitting in a boardroom pontificating. It is team members. It's like real people who really work at our restaurants. Hourly team members. I'm sitting at a table with a fry cook, a restaurant manager, somebody who works in a dishroom or whatever, a restaurant. We're all contributing as partners equally to what our culture is.

Michael Osanloo: And then this is going to sound bizarre, but we engaged in that process in 2019, right after I got here. And as crazy as this sounds, COVID was a blessing in disguise for us. Because when we came up with our values, COVID then hit. And that is one of those inflection points where as an executive team, as a company, you have an opportunity to put actions against words. So we said, look, family, greatness energy, fun. What did we do when the world started to freak out? Remember restaurant industry shut down, dining rooms were shut down, mass, layoffs, et cetera, et cetera. So at Portillo's, we did not lay off a single person because that's not what you do if you're going to treat each other like family. What we did instead is we gave everybody as many hours as they wanted. We cross-trained them, we did deep cleaning at all of our restaurants, and we pivoted our entire restaurant model to drive-through so that our guests can be happy and our team members can get hours and get paid. We set up hotlines because, remember, the early stage of COVID was terrifying. Nobody knew what was going to happen, no one knew how long it's going to be, and it's scary. And so we set up hotlines where if a team member tested positive for COVID, they could call our hotline and we would direct them to the right resources to get the help that they needed for a period of time. During COVID we paid everyone's health care benefits. We provided it at a company expense because that's what family does. We set up and funded a 513. We called it the Heart of Portillo’s Fund, to help our team members and our colleagues if something really bad happened, if they had a family member pass away and they couldn't afford a funeral or something horrible happened, we could help each other, take care of each other. That, to me, setting up the culture, teasing it out and teasing out the voice of the frontline team. That's how you define culture. But then your actions matter. And when the going got tough, we took care of our folks. We had their backs, we supported them. God bless my board who gave us the latitude to do this. I described it to them as, this is enlightened capitalism. These people matter. They are our frontline brand ambassadors. Keeping them happy matters. Taking care of them matters. Being genuine and authentic matters. Ford completely supported me and the leadership team on this, and it's paid dividends ever since. We have record low levels of turnover in our hourly staff. We have record low levels of turnover in our management at our restaurants. And I attribute that to being a company that genuinely cares about its people and has demonstrated it by our actions.

Adam Mendler: Just about every business out there articulates values. You go onto a company website, there are values on there. You walk into an office. There are values on there in some shape, form or fashion. How do you build culture? It's not articulating the values, it's living the values.

Michael Osanloo: Absolutely right. 100% words on a board or words in a slide deck are really cute and easy to do. Living them, activating against them, holding yourself accountable to them. I mean, jeez, Adam, I should have said it. Like in our performance reviews, we evaluate each other on our values. Did you live the values? It's a factor in people's performance reviews. It's a factor in compensation conversations. I mean, we take it very, very seriously.

Adam Mendler: Michael, what can anyone listening to this conversation do to become more successful personally and professionally?

Michael Osanloo: Whatever success I've had professionally, one of the things that I've tried to do constantly is be very learning agile. Learning agility matters. I have made many, many mistakes in my career, in my life. I try to learn from my mistakes. What I try not to do is repeat my mistakes. I think there are times when to assuage our own egos or psyche, we like to gloss over things and pretend we didn't do anything wrong, or we didn't screw something up, or it was this person's fault, or I pride myself on being highly, highly accountable for no other reason than because I'm a work in process, right? I'm a human being who wants to get better every single day. So I pride myself on being very contemplative about my own mistakes, being learning agile, and examining when I screw something up. Why did I screw that up? How did I get to that point? And what would I do differently now that I know better? And so I'm a fan of making new novel mistakes every day, Adam, and not repeating my old mistakes.

Adam Mendler: Michael, thank you for all the great advice and thank you for being a part of Thirty Minutes Mentors.

Michael Osanloo: Thank you for having me.


Adam Mendler is an entrepreneur, writer, speaker, educator, and nationally-recognized authority on leadership. Adam is the creator and host of the business and leadership podcast Thirty Minute Mentors, where he goes one on one with America's most successful people - Fortune 500 CEOs, founders of household name companies, Hall of Fame and Olympic gold medal-winning athletes, political and military leaders - for intimate half-hour conversations each week. A top leadership speaker, Adam draws upon his insights building and leading businesses and interviewing hundreds of America's top leaders as a top keynote speaker to businesses, universities, and non-profit organizations. Adam has written extensively on leadership and related topics, having authored over 70 articles published in major media outlets including Forbes, Inc. and HuffPost, and has conducted more than 500 one on one interviews with America’s top leaders through his collective media projects. Adam teaches graduate-level courses on leadership at UCLA and is an advisor to numerous companies and leaders. A Los Angeles native, Adam is a lifelong Angels fan and an avid backgammon player.

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