Image provided by Chequan Lewis.
Chequan’s story is part of the “What I’ve Learned” interview series, which features the stories of KFC, Pizza Hut, Taco Bell and Yum! employees in their own words.
Chequan Lewis, Pizza Hut U.S. senior director of the Express team, has always kept his ear to the ground on opportunities to help develop himself as a leader. And when he read about the Presidential Leadership Scholars in Time magazine, he vowed to apply when the time was right.
Over the years, his friends expressed surprise that he did not immediately apply to the program that brings together key administration officials and living Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush to teach the participants how to further excel as leaders in their communities and fields of endeavor while uniting a divided nation. After all, Lewis has a penchant for such things.
In high school, he was one of 435 students selected for the National Youth Summit in Washington D.C. and gave the convention speech on Capitol Hill. In law school, he gave the commencement speech to his peers at Harvard.
So when Lewis turned on C-Span and watched the graduation ceremony of the initiative’s third class, he knew he couldn’t wait any longer and applied with the help of a recommendation letter from his coach, Pizza Hut U.S. Chief Legal Officer Lauren Leahy.
“I’ve been fortunate to participate in a lot of great leadership programs, but I’ve never done anything that thrilled and inspired me in the way that Presidential Leadership Scholars did,” Lewis said. “A lot of my classmates were lawyers, doctors, some nonprofit CEOs, and some were elected officials already. I can’t replace what I learned and the lasting relationships I made.”
As the first Yum! Brands employee to be accepted into the exclusive program (over 1,000 apply; typically 60 are accepted), Lewis gives advice and shares what he’ll bring back to Pizza Hut U.S.
Remain open to all points of view and people
One of the most impactful experiences I had in the program was a two-and-a-half-hour conversation with George W. Bush over dinner. Exchanging jokes, I told him that we went to D.C. for slightly different reasons in 2001: “Mr. President, you went to the Oval Office to make history; I went to Howard University to get a bachelor’s degree.”
As a college freshman and sophomore, I can still remember my dad — a 30-year Navy veteran — having to leave to do extended drills during the weekdays and weekends while he was in the Reserves. I remember the same thing at the beginning of Desert Storm during President George H.W. Bush’s term. This, along with other issues, impacted how 17-year-old me viewed the president. Now, 35-year-old me has a different, experiential lens.
My dinner conversation with President Bush really framed the power of proximity for me. The time he spent with me, and the way he’s reached out to me, inviting me to come visit him in Dallas after the program, has completely changed, not just my perspective on what American politics can still be, but my perspective on him as a man and as a leader as well. He’s one of the funniest, most genuine men I’ve known.
Of all the things that could have come out of that experience, to be personally challenged and to get the opportunity to view him, up close, as a three-dimensional human reminds me of what our society needs. We need to get out of our bubbles and not retreat from people who may not necessarily agree with every single thing we do or say or think. We need to start engaging people as people. Total agreement should not be a prerequisite for relationship.
Your job is presidentially important
I look at the way Presidents Clinton and Bush treated the weight of decision-making on a day-to-day basis and think about how we talk a lot about improving “your piece” of Yum!. I’m not sitting in the Oval Office right now, but my office and what I do every day is pretty important to somebody. And so, I really try to take the decisions I make and assess them in a calibrated, forward-thinking way like these presidents had to do because that was their job at the time. I try and take the impact of my decisions just as seriously; it’s what Pizza Hut has “elected” me to do.
Brand love is a powerful emotion
Everyone loves and is rooting for Pizza Hut. I can’t tell you the number of times that someone in the program asked me, “Oh, you’re the lawyer at Pizza Hut, right?” Even famous guest speakers! I’ll never forget when President Bush’s chief of staff Andrew Card said to me during a break, “Hey, I wanted to ask you some questions about Pizza Hut. That sounds like a really cool job.”
Our brand is so beloved and ingrained in the American fabric that we have a responsibility to get it right, because what we do matters to people. People took their prom dates to Pizza Hut after the dance and are hosting pizza parties for their Little League teams featuring our products. We’re in the business of making memories as much as we make pizza.
It’s really important to remember that, yes, it’s “just” pizza, but it’s also not just pizza. We represent — and it’s true of all our brands at Yum! — something much bigger than the work we’re doing at our desks. Pizza brings people together; it’s a communal food.
We’re a connection point for culture and community.
The power to let go
When I asked Presidents Clinton and Bush how we improve the state of our politics during the graduation ceremony, President Clinton said something that stuck with me: “We have to learn to let go.” I kind of got chills when he said that because one of the things that leaps off the page in my personality assessments I’ve taken/received at Yum is that in order for me to really lead the way I want to lead, I’ve got to let go of my mistakes because it’s impossible to really be in the game, really give it my all, and actually be perfect at the same time.
At Pizza Hut, we’re walking down a steady path of transforming a 60-year-old brand; this means we’ve got to be big and bold at times. But recognizing the human aspect of being big and bold opens you up to things that you’re going to wish you did better. And the thing I’m continually trying to work on, and I need to model it so that my team can embrace it as well, is to let it go when I stumble walking along that good faith path. Striving for excellence is the demand. Chasing perfection is the work of fiction.
Find a job that will support you as a person — not just for what you can do for the company
This program required me to be physically gone from the Pizza Hut corporate office once a month, typically Thursday and Friday. The day I graduated, I texted Artie (Starrs, Pizza Hut U.S. president) and said, “This day isn’t possible without a Pizza Hut culture that is willing to engage me in all the ways that I need to show up in this world. Thank you for setting that tone.”
I’m proud to say that my work didn’t slide during the program, but I know that not every work environment would’ve given me the space and the grace to go away and do this once a month trusting that I would get my job done. And so I’m really grateful to Pizza Hut’s culture and its leaders (especially my coach) for the opportunity to see this dream through.
