POWERHOUSE WOMEN
IN FRANCHISING
“The interesting challenge that I find
with women is that they often do not have
good insight or direction on where they
want to take their career,” Stutz says. “That
is something I can’t decide for them.”
She never lacked ambition, and her own
career clarity came early at a gathering of
the Women’s Foodservice Forum, a leadership development organization that Stutz
would later chair. At the time, the group
was releasing the results of a membership
survey revealing that not one of the 400
participants aspired to be a CEO. On that
day, the forum chair pressed her audience
with the challenge: “Why not us?”
“That was a pivotal time for me,” says
Stutz. “I sat there in that meeting and said,
‘Why not me?’”
Having established her credentials in
operations, Stutz set out to pave her road
to the C-suite by honing her financial skills,
forming a finance committee at Applebee’s
to think creatively about how businesses
invest their money. Each week the group
of investor relations, finance, and marketing members put themselves in the shoes
of a CEO or CFO of a publicly traded
company (typically a competitor or vendor) to answer one question: What would
you do with the cash?
“It was a really interesting exercise to
make you think more broadly about running the business,” she says. “It created
opportunities to speak and learn the language, and because of that, I ended up on
the investor relations team.” And to think
Stutz thought she would become a dentist.
Growing up in Aurora, Ill., her family
did not have “a lot of means,” but her parents were her first mentors “who taught
us never to see obstacles.” Aurora was also
the place she would meet Rodger Stutz,
her high school sweetheart and husband
of 35 years. The couple has two grown
sons, both married, and are still reveling
in last year’s birth of their first grandchild.
“I feel so blessed,” says Stutz. “I got it right
the first time.”
As a teenager, Stutz left babysitting
gigs and three paper routes behind for a
crew job with her twin sister at McDonald’s. Working the window (where women
were relegated to at the time), she got her
first glimpse of the possibilities the business might hold for her.
“I was 16 years old, watching these
22
guys, area directors, driving in with brand
new company cars,” Stutz remembers. “I
knew that if I was going to stay in the restaurant business, my goal was to be an area
director so I could have a brand new car.”
Stutz and her sister were the first
generation in the family to attend college. Initially, she felt her parents expected
her to become a doctor or dentist. She
took dentistry courses at Western Illinois
University—until discussions with actual
dentists convinced her that she wouldn’t
enjoy the profession. With her parents’
blessing, Stutz switched her motivation
and major, graduating with a bachelor’s
degree in food and nutrition and working in various positions at Wendy’s before and after college. She later earned a
master’s degree in business administration
from MidAmerica Nazarene University
in Kansas.
Stutz steadily built her credentials in
operations, serving for five years as a division vice president at Wendy’s before
joining Applebee’s in 1999 as senior vice
president of operations. When an executive position opened that Stutz wanted,
mentor Lou Kaucic, former Applebee’s
chief people officer, helped her think
about career advancement in a new way.
“He asked, ‘Who is in the room when
the decision is made?’” she recalls. “Who
is going to sponsor you or bring your
name up, and who is going to speak on
your behalf?”
Kaucic, now an executive career coach,
preached the value of building relationships with decision-makers, a task that can
prove more challenging in operations, with
so much time spent in the field. Focusing
on the rewards of building networks was
an eye-opening mindset change with a
big payoff for Stutz.
“I learned so much from spending time
with them and seeing how they looked at
business, and I think I grew significantly as
well,” she says. “It gave me a much better
perspective, and I made better decisions,
based on their feedback.”
Stutz views every experience as a learning opportunity. One of her toughest came
in 2012 as CEO of beleaguered Così Inc.,
where she established a three-year strategy
for long-term success and raised millions
to implement it. From the beginning, Stutz
faced an uphill struggle to turn \