DEI Advisors Podcast

Nicolas Graff, Associate Dean, Tisch Center for Hospitality, New York University interviewed by David Kong

April 30, 2023 David Kong
DEI Advisors Podcast
Nicolas Graff, Associate Dean, Tisch Center for Hospitality, New York University interviewed by David Kong
Show Notes Transcript

Nic offers a solution for the industry's labor crisis. He discusses his approach to challenges and difficulties. In addition, he shares how he adapts as a foreigner to fit in and lessons from working in complex and political situations in his career. He  ends with some advice for aspiring individuals.

David Kong:

This is David Kong, the founder and principal of DEI Advisors. We are a nonprofit organization dedicated to empowering individuals. Realize their career aspirations. We are delighted to welcome Nicholas Graff, the Associate Dean of the Jonathan Center for Hospitality at New York University. Welcome to the show,

Nicolas Graff:

Nick. Thank you David. Glad to be here and thanks for the invitation.

David Kong:

It's great to have you. I know how busy you are. Thanks for taking that time. A lot of people have probably seen you at the NYU conference, and you've been around the speaking circuit. Also, I think people know you, but some may not know how you ended up being where you are today and doing a great wonderful work that you do now, and perhaps you can share. Your career journey starting from when you were, I understand you were being trained as, you were trained as a professional chef.

Nicolas Graff:

Absolutely. I, in fact, so I was born in Switzerland, and I'm a high school dropout. My parents wanted me to pursue a university. They themselves didn't go to your university, so they wanted me to be a. To get a college degree, but I wasn't I wasn't ready for it at, 1617. I wasn't ready for it. So I was able to do an apprenticeship, a chef apprenticeship in Switzerland, which is a. Regarded career pathway. When you think about it, Switzerland and Germany, about 70% of the people never go to college. They get a job and a career via the apprenticeship model. And Switzerland is doing just fine with that. Now at towards the end of my apprenticeship program where you, so you work for most of the week and then you go to school one. About two days a week. Towards the end of it, the the owner of the restaurant I was working at went bankrupt. And so gave me a shock and I thought if I wanted to achieve my goal, which was my dream to own a restaurant, I also needed to learn a little more of the management side of things. So it was luckily within the Swissa. Educational system, I was able to get back into higher education and I got my bachelor degree from hotel school in Switzerland. And then I, I discovered new skills. I discovered that I actually liked reading books and and I was pretty good in finance. At the end of the, at the end of the bachelor degree, they. The school was launching a new MBA program together with H E C Luanne. And and they said, do you wanna, do, you wanna do an mba? And, you can do it part-time and you'd be teaching assistant part-time. And I said, is that is that gonna be free? And they said, yeah, free of charge. You're getting paid for the teaching assistant position. I said, why not? So I got my mba and during the MBA time, I met with a number of professors that inspired me. Stayed with us Uhhu maker, who's the dean of U N L V and others. And one of them, Mike Olson, who unfortunately passed away a couple of years ago just really inspired me. And he said, why don't you do a PhD with me? And I said, fit with you. Why not? What's a PhD by the way? And so I went to Blacksburg, Virginia. And I remember we, we landed in, in Reagan airport in DC and we were delayed by a day due to a total blackout on the East coast. And so I had a car rental. I took the cheapest one. But when I got to the car rental shop, they said you were supposed to be here yesterday. And I said, I'm sorry, We were delayed and they say, okay, the only car left was a yellow Mustang. And so I a bright yellow Mustang. And so I was upgraded and I took that bright yellow Mustang and driving up to Blacksburg and something. So I was there at Virginia Tech, got my PhD in finance and And the rest is pretty much history. Then I, I taught the University of Houston, went back in Europe at Lesh, at Luanne, at at Essec Business School. And and I'm now here at nyu. So that's a little bit my journey.

David Kong:

That's been a spectacular journey, but it's interesting that you mentioned the professor. Is that help that guides you and help get you into the PhD program and, No doubt that gave you a lot of mentoring. It really speaks to the importance of networking and finding advocates and mentors along the way. Well done. Thank you. Now you are West National, but I think you just got your green card, right? So you are US immigrant as well, and you lived in different countries. Tell us how did you Try to fit in as a foreigner in many ways. How do you find the ability to adapt to different cultures and different languages and different ways of how things are done?

Nicolas Graff:

It's it's, it hasn't been always easy, number one, so you have to be Steadfast in your, in, in, in your journey? I think and resilience sometimes, but I think it's about curiosity. You need to be curious about others. I've always, I. Being a people person. So I like being with people and so you have to be open-minded, curious, of course, respectful. And the curiosity also needs to be curiosity about differences. You need to be you need to be aware of the others. And and be curious about, why they may be different in, in, in the way they behave or in the way they think. And so I, I've made a, a few mistakes along the way. Mistakes of not understanding some sensitivities. And I remember when I got back in the US and I, I've been in and out of the US for the past 20 years. Between my study and In the US on the west coast in Newport. And, but when I came back about five years ago the notion of diversity, for instance and equity inclusion and all of these subjects was really growing had grown for years, but was really front and center and which it wasn't. 15 years ago when I got my PhD. It wasn't the same discussion. And it's isn't the same discussion back in Europe when you think about Europe. I lived in France. It's not about equity, it's about equality, which is very different. It's the French said it's liberty, equality, and what is it? Which is another word. So that's the foundation of the French Republic. And and so equality is very different from equity. Equality is everybody's equal. Equity is you treat people in an equitable way which by the way happens to be different depending on. On, on, on each individual's background and all of these very subtle differences. You have to be aware of them. You have to be aware and curious about learning about them. So that's, that, that's one thing. In terms of adapting to other cultures, other behaviors and. I remember I, I took a, at nyu I took a couple of courses we have on, things like microaggressions and it stuck with me really because I took that course and. A few weeks later, I met with some new students and asked one of the students, Hey, where are you from? And that student was Asian, was an Asian student. And and he said, I'm from Long Island. And I was, that's great. And, but all of a sudden I thought, is that could've been perceived as an kind of an aggression. You're asking me because I'm Asian, right? You're not asking me because you really wanna know me. You're asking me cause I'm Asian and all of these things were things I was not aware back in Europe. And so you simply have to be curious. To be able to adapt to situations that are sometimes very subtly different and not obviously different. The language is an obvious thing. I got used to have a fairly thick French accent. I think I've been working on it sometimes it comes back and I, I just. Take it as it's a funny thing, as long as people understand me. It just, I just take it as, with a pinch of salt and some humor. I, I guess now in terms of being an immigrant, it's been it's been rough over the past about the past, I would say 18 months. I. When the pandemic hit, I was at the very early stage of my green card application. And and at the time when the pandemic hit, everything shut down, the government started to, former President Trump started to make decisions about immigration and and so I was worried. I was probably calling my. Immigration lawyer on a weekly basis to know, is that affecting me? Is that new executive order affecting me? And and as long as you don't have some sense of, I had job security, but I didn't have immigration security and so it was really a hard. Period. With all the anxiety that came with the pandemic, with the black Lives Matter movement with, all of these things, there was a lot of emotions. And finally when I received a green card and September last year and and that was such a relief and, you can finally make plans and projections. I guess it's the. It's the outcome of being resilient as well which I mentioned early on. No,

David Kong:

no doubt about that. That's good advice. Congratulations again on getting a green card. And by the way, you speak with a very distinguished French accent. There's absolutely nothing wrong. A lot of people probably love it be included. So lemme summarize what I think, what you said about. Fitting in, in difficult in complex environment is that you take an interest. You Curious and you ask questions, but you're respectful and you want to pay attention to subtleties. Those are just wonderful and safe advice. I appreciate sharing that. Let's talk about working in the academia world because it's notorious for being complex and political sometimes It's no doubt difficult. So share with us some lessons that you've learned working in complex and political environments.

Nicolas Graff:

I think it's you have different systems in our head. You have the tenure track system, and you have a tenure track system. And I've been working in both. When I started at the University of Houston and Virginia Tech Essec Business School in France, they were all tenure track types of systems. And in essence, what happens there is you have series of three years to prove to your peers that you are worthy of getting tenured and you are only worthy of getting tenured if you publish enough in academic journals. And and and. So there's no, the way you evaluate it is really you're evaluated by a committee of peers and you evaluate it then by your dean and and so you have to work laterally and you have to work up, right? So you have to make sure, you have to make sure your boss respects you, the dean. So you have to manage up and you have to manage laterally your colleagues, because you are, some of them may end up in your. Evaluation committee. So you have to be also respected by your peers which is a challenge in in, in education because you're not really evaluated by students in that context. And which, has a lot of you can be very critical about that system that, put students away from making the tenure decision. So you have to be aware of that. You have to be aware of the tensions. Some faculty, they need to respect you, but not too much. You don't wanna, you don't wanna be too smart to, create shadows on them. So you have to be just aware of up and, the management up and the colleagues just to make sure that you navigate through that system. Enough. And I've always. Done that by being, true to myself. So I've never lied because I think if you're not true to yourself, it's gonna, it's gonna, get you at some point you're gonna make a mistake. And and people will just realize that you are not true to yourself. And so they will. Keep that against you. So you have to be true to yourself. You have to be honest. You have to be direct, but still, while being aware of the environment and the sensitivities of your peers and bosses. But you have to be, I think you have to be honest. And again, I think the, I always consider myself as a, a. Continuous students because I learn every day. And so the, I go back to that notion of curiosity. You need to be also constantly learning from, your peers from others. It's always been helpful to me. Now, in, in the other environment, which is the one I'm currently in, which is a non-tenure track environment, faculty are contract faculty. We renew their contract every two, three or five years. And the evaluation is essentially based on student success which is something I personally value greatly. And I think it's it's a very good system compared to the other one. And then myself, I'm evaluated by my boss the dean of the school who my contract every three years. So the political environment, I've had a hard, I'd say I had a hard of time. Adjusting to it at nyu. I thought NYU is a gigantic university 65,000 students. It's a 13 or 14 billion yearly budget. It has, includes a hospital, Langone hospital system. We have all of these different schools and colleges. So it's a big, it's a big, it's a big, it's a big corporation. In many ways we not for profit but, it's run like a corporation. We have a lot of real estate in Manhattan as you can imagine. And, that's complicated to manage. And so you. Things, were going slower than I expected at nyu. So I became a little bit impatient early on in my tenure here. So I just had to learn that, I'm on different timeframe now. I'm in my position. I'm thinking about the next five to 10 years as opposed to the next two. And so I had to learn that and make the adjustment and became increasingly patient, which doesn't mean I'm not, I don't want things to, to be, things to be done. But I'm, I've learned to be patient in complex environment and bureaucratic and political environment, you have to be patient. Yeah, no, I agree with you.

David Kong:

Yeah in complex and political environments. But I also heard you say and very wisely, a few things that you do very well, which is you be true to yourself. You do a good job, you earn the respect of others around you, and you are respectful to them. They're respectful to you. And by the way, don't outshine them too much. Don't be a threat to other people that, that's really good advice. Let's talk about the spectacular journey that you've been on and the achievements you've been able to accomplish. What are some of the contributing factors to your success?

Nicolas Graff:

I, I think I've said I think I've said yes in my life much more often than I said. No. Even when someone, like what I said when Luanne said, do you want to do an mba? That wasn't part of my career plan. I, my career plan was, do the chef apprenticeship, learn the cooking skills. Then go to Luanne, get your bachelor in hotel management to get the management skills and then open your restaurants. That was my plan, that was my dream. But then they came up with something I had never thought of and I said, it's free. I can learn. I can continue to learn. I can earn another credential, I can meet other people. Yes, I'll do it. And so I did it, and then when Mike Olson said, do you want to do a PhD? I honestly, I didn't know what PhD meant. Not at all. And he, the guy who was smart, the smartest guy I've ever met, his knowledge base was gigantic. He knew everything. I've always tried to find something he didn't know that I knew and I failed to that. So he was such a a wonderful. Human being number one, but also such a clever man. And so when he said, do you wanna do your PhD? I just said, yes. I took the chance. I said, I can always own my restaurants because these skills I carry them with me. But if I do that a PhD and I'm gonna learn new skills. I'm gonna learn, new knowledge it's gonna expand my frontiers. I remember taking courses. I took so many courses in statistics. Or in econometrics these kinds of things. I, do I ever use them? Yes. Sometimes in my research, but I mostly use them intellectually to frame problems conceptually. And so it's been incredibly useful. So first advice is to, successful careers say yes more often than no. And I remember when Luanne came and said, Do you wanna be a teaching assistant? I said, yes. And they said, okay, you can, you teach finance. But in, in the English program. So I took when I was at the school there, I took the program in French. And my English wasn't really good. And they said can you teach that in English? And I said, yes. And I really didn't know if I could. But, I took all of my courage. I took some English, additional English lessons, and I started to teach in English. And that contributed to my success in in, in the program, in the MBA program, and contributed to my success then in my PhD program. And then, hopefully contributed to my success here at nyu. So saying yes, even if it's, even if the steps seems a little high. A lot of people can figure it out. So that's one two, I come back to that notion of curiosity and always being curious about new things. That's probably the, with the Say Yes, be curious, stick to your, to, to your truth, true self. And I did that in one of my last job when I. I took a job in Switzerland and with the hotel schools that had been acquired by a French private equity firm. And there's nothing wrong with private equity firm but I think they, their profit obsession clashes too much with the educational. Goal of higher education. So I took the job well, paid near close to my family in a beautiful setting, the ALP Mountains. And I, at some point I said, no, be true to yourself. And I quit. I quit the job and and I took a step back in a way I was, chief Academic Officer. I'm associate dean. It's different environment. NYU is much bigger, but. I took a step down in a way but I think it, it's on paper because the reality is I took a step up. I joined the US in New York, nyu I've never met so many leaders like yourself of the industry, thanks to the NYU conference. So I think, by being true to yourself, you're gonna, you're gonna find a way where you really fit. And I think right now I found that I'm probably here to stay for a while, as long as NYU wants me. Because I think it's a great fit. So I said a lot of time, yes, I, I remain curious. And stay true to myself. Even if it meant sometimes taking a step perceptually step down, something you would think it's a step down, but it, but actually isn't.

David Kong:

Yeah. I, that's a wonderful story. I, I appreciate you sharing that. And you talk about curiosity, continuous learning, not being afraid to take a risk and also sometimes recognizing that it's not the right job and not being afraid. To make a change because you ultimately want to be true to yourself. Those are just wonderful lessons and advice that you're sharing. I appreciate that. Now I have no doubt many of us, we've all faced challenges and difficulties and sometimes disappointments. And you alluded to the stress that you were under during the pandemic because you're waiting for the green card and there's some factors working against you. And no doubt, that's a tremendous challenge. Can you share with us your approach to challenges?

Nicolas Graff:

First I think it's always better to face challenges when you're with someone together, with other people. That's the strength of we, right? Whether it's, it might. In a personal life. I, I sh I have a wonderful wife, Stephanie, and and we were in it together. And and like any lasting marriage, I guess e everyone who's gone has lasting marriage, that you're gonna go through some challenging times what, whatever they are. But luckily I was with Stephanie and so the morning I, I woke up and, Totally panicking about that immigration status. She was calm and quiet and she was able to take me out of that panic mode. And the next day it was her who was having some anxiety issues. And then, and I was the one who was able to, help her get past that. So I think it's always easier to face challenges when you're not alone. I think that's number one. And that's true in business too. That's true at work. That's true in your career. When you have colleagues of mentors and advocates who can help you cope with some of your, career related challenges. It's always better. And I'm looking, every institution I've worked, I can have, I can say I have at least one or two. People that I consider as close friends, that I've made close friends with, and that I consider as mentors. And so I can pick up my phone and I can say, Hey, this is what I'm facing right now. What do you think? And and so again, the power of having friends and mentors and partners that's probably one of the best way to to cope with. With challenges. The other one is resilience. I think how our industry has learned that from the pandemic, we are gonna get through this and I remember, when. You were on the webinar with the other with that group CEOs and Chris and we still had Arne Sorensen in 2020. Everybody was saying, we gonna get through it. It's hard. It's probably the hardest thing we've ever faced as industry, but we gonna get through it. And indeed industry got through it. And and that's a matter of resilience and, Deep belief that, there's another meaning to life or to business or to things that it's not captured in a moment that may be very challenging. And so you're gonna get past it. There a trajectory to life or to business that's the trajectory is not gonna change. There may be a bump in the road, but the tr trajectory is not gonna change. And you have to keep that in mind. You have to keep the faith in it. I tell my students that, constantly because so many of my students when the hotel industry, overnight shut, shut down and they were about to graduate you had to tell them something, right? You had to to tell them, there's it's. It's will be tough for the next, and we didn't really know back then. We thought it was like couple of months maybe, hopefully by, and it took longer. But once it rebounds, then there will be plenty opportunities. People will be dying to hire you. And this is exactly what's happening today. People are dying to hire our students and so you just have to have to take the long view sometimes and not get dragged down by. By the short term challenge you're facing. So I think deans would be my my approach my, my different approaches to coping with challenges.

David Kong:

Yeah. No, that's a, again very good advice. You talked earlier about having a network that you can lean on and building a team that you can trust and can get you through challenges. I think those things are so important and then having a belief and a faith in order to find the resilience, that's also really important because when you're going through a really difficult situation, you do need to find hope and that hope comes from yourself. You've gotta be able to must up the courage to believe in yourself and believe in a team, and that's how we can get through it. That's great advice. Thank you. Now switching gears, you've talked about, this industry's labor situation. Before the pandemic, the labor situation, I would call it a pretty severe challenge, but after the pandemic, it's an outright crisis. But you've made a comment that the industry's labor crisis is not due to a lack of talent. Can you elaborate on that?

Nicolas Graff:

It's I think there's talent out there. I think the challenge the industry, we. Now is there is talent and there is, they are good jobs and it's, there's no, there's a missing matching mechanism. And the matching mechanism historically was people really wanted to join the industry. The industry had a good reputation and. And a lot of people wanted to get jobs in, in an industry that's, that makes people dream, right? Travel is about, dreaming about places, going somewhere and enjoying, new experiences. But I think for a couple of years, and that predates a little bit the pandemic, I think the industry took it for granted a few years prior to the pandemic and I'd say hotel school and hospitality programs too. We took it for granted. People want to do a career in hospitality management. And the reality is not so much anymore because the perception that people have. Developed, and that's been accelerated by the pandemic. The perception is that the jobs are, frontline jobs only. They're housekeeping jobs, they're front of the house jobs and that there's nothing beyond that and that there's nothing around it. So people are not aware of the entirety of the hotel industry when it comes to jobs. They don't know. Jobs at the headquarter. They certainly don't know jobs in the back of the house as much as they know the front of the house. They don't know that there's a good career in hotel finance. You can be, director of finance is a great job. They don't necessarily know the, revenue management. They don't know that we have engineers they don't know we have all of that technology component. Now, nowadays in in, in the industry, they still focus on the central of their jobs that were very visibly affected by the pandemic because they were the first one that we had to, as an industry, we had to furlough or let go. And they were the most visible ones. And so I think the industry, and I know that, eh, n l a and others are working on it to ch to change the perception, to change the branding of the industry when it comes to a career. Offering good career choices and good career pathways. It's gonna take a while. It's gonna take a while. I also think that we all know that in this country we have an education, a higher education crisis. So it's not, you have a hotel industry labor crisis. You have talent pool that's no longer able to match with the jobs that are available. And on top of it, you have a higher education crisis, which is, it's in the news every day. We're talking about student debt and issues about funding for college degrees and. I don't think everyone needs a college degree. Look at me. I have one ultimately, but I didn't necessarily have to have one. I could have had a great career without one. Because there is a system in Switzerland that allow for people to go through a career pathway without necessarily having to pay for college. And paying for college is expensive. It's an expensive proposition. If I look at nyu, NYU's expensive. No question about it. It's one of the best. University in the country but also it's very expensive to operate. When you think about the cost of operating in Manhattan it's extremely expensive. You when you have faculty and staff in Manhattan, you have to pay them more than if you are in another city. But because cost of living is too expensive, so it's very expensive. And not every job, especially in our industry, especially the early jobs, Allow for paying back that student debt. And so when you graduate and you have 50, 60,$120,000 in debt, you question whether you want to take a first job at 35,000 a year. You, you look at it and say, Hey, And I know that's in, maybe 2, 3, 5 years down the road, I can make 85,000. But am I willing to carry that student debt for five years while I'm making 35 to 55,000? So there's a challenge there. And so you have really three things. Industry lost branding power as a as a for talent. People who. Questioning the value proposition of the industry and young graduate to carry loads of debt. And so there has to, things have to change. And I think the, on the industry is working on providing better working environments with more flexible scheduling on property and et cetera, et cetera, which is a great. A great a great way great things to do on higher education also need to do something and so we told you about a project we have, which is a project of bringing that Swiss apprenticeship model in, in the us which would hopefully award a, an associate degree by NYU at the fraction of the cost of a traditional bachelor degree. And and we gonna focus on, A few career pathways to, to begin with. We're gonna focus on hotels hotel operations. We're gonna focus on sales and marketing. We're gonna focus on event management to start with and see if it if it works. We would focus on high school students in their junior and senior year. They would work part-time as an apprentice, graduate from high school after their senior year transfer to the NYU Associate Program degree and graduate within another year. And they get paid. Because they get paid as an apprentice and they get their education at the fraction of the cost. So I think that's one way Higher education also needs, need to change. So the hotel industry needs to change. Higher education needs to change to. Get that matching mechanism back in place.

David Kong:

Yeah, no I wish you much success with that and I applaud you for starting that program because that's a similar program to some countries in Europe have that, Switzerland, Germany, and others. And it's proven. And if you go back to the objective of lowering the cost of tuition to earn a college degree and creating a pathway and giving people. On the job training from the get-go. I think those are all wonderful things. I wish you much success with that. Thank you. We're coming to the end of our time, but before I let you go, would you be kind enough to share some advice to women and minority groups who are trying to get ahead but find it difficult?

Nicolas Graff:

I, I would say it's, Take advantage of any kind of networking opportunities you may have and open up, reach out to people are willing to help and support. I'll give you an example. I we've launched at nyu, we've launched last year. We've launched an incubator for new startups and founders who wants to get early stage funding and. So when we launched the incubator program. It's open to NYU student, every NYU student in alumni. So we had some press coverage and a week later I had a woman from Indian background. I think she's second generation from India. Her parents own small hotel. And and she said to me, she said look, I, here, this is my startup id, but I'm struggling finding people I can talk to. And she said I graduated from a college, a community college on the West coast, and she said, I just don't know anyone in the industry. That I can talk to, to get, my product piloted in a hotel and she said you at NYU have all this network. What can you do to help me? And so I broke my own route and I said we are gonna, we are gonna take that startup and we are gonna, we're gonna have her into the incubator program so that she can meet all of our mentors and investors and give her the advice. So she's the perfect example of what women and minorities have to do. They have to reach out, they have to say, oh, I read about that guy who's At nyu, he talks about all of the networking opportunities he's giving to his students. Let me talk to him and see whether he's willing to give some of it to me. And she did that. She reached out and I broke my own rule to, to help her. So people need to reach out. I think if you if you reach out the worst you can get is just someone who can just won't respond. That's the worst is the person doesn't respond. It, it doesn't cost anything to reach out to people and seek advice and guidance. Look, we, we have as the Marriott Sorenson Center for Hospitality Leadership at Howard University. We soon have new programs and the new I think that they're looking at the major in hospitality and tourism management and. We invited 20 students at the conference, both in November and in, in, in June to volunteer together without students. And the feedback from these minority, men and women was, we didn't realize that it was so easy to talk to senior leaders. We never knew about that. And and so I, I think just that feedback makes me say Reach out to people. They can be senior executives, presidents, whatever. Reach out to them. You never know. They may respond, and if they do, it's gonna help you a great

David Kong:

way. Yeah, that, that's excellent advice. I've always believed in being proactive, taking charge, and your advice of reaching out. It's actually. Not as difficult as one. I think that's excellent advice. Thank you so much and Nick appreciate all the sage advice you've dispensed today and also your time. I know you are extremely busy. Thank you again. And to the audience if you enjoy today's interview, there are plenty more on our website. It's d ei advisors. Dot org. We hope to see you on our website, the advisor.org. Thank you again.

Nicolas Graff:

Thank you, David. Thank

David Kong:

you.