DEI Advisors Hospitality Podcast

Evan Frazier, President & CEO, The Advanced Leadership Institute (TALI), interviewed by Lan Elliott

July 15, 2024 David Kong

Evan describes his path to leadership and how seeking broader experiences led him to found his nonprofit, TALI, which is focused on cultivating black executive leadership.  He shares why those aspiring to leadership roles need to develop their financial skills, how to distinguish oneself today, and the Frazier Formula for Success.

Lan Elliott:

Hello and welcome to DEI Advisors. My name is Lan Elliott on behalf of DEI Advisors. And today I am really pleased to have Evan Frazier on our show. He is the president and CEO of the Advanced Leadership Institute, affectionately known as TALI. And I am so pleased to have you on, Evan. Welcome.

Evan Frazier:

Thank you. Such a great opportunity to be here. I really appreciate it.

Lan Elliott:

Evan, we met I think last November when we were on a panel together, and I thought your journey is so interesting and what you're doing is fascinating. So I really wanted to have you on DEI Advisors, and I know you've had a really interesting career journey. Would you share some of the inflection points? in your career and if there were any factor or factors that contributed to your success?

Evan Frazier:

Sure. Sure. Well for the audience I've had a very career, you know, went from various industries. I started in the hospitality industry ended up going into nonprofits for a little while, went into banking, went back to lead a nonprofit and then went into healthcare before I started the Advanced Leadership Institute. And so my journey is, it's a, it's a different journey. It's different industries different sectors and along the way, there are numerous inflection points. I would say the first was, you know, I started in hospitality, went to Cornell, went to the hotel school there. And so it was very much in the industry. I was working for a great company in Pittsburgh Eaton Park hospitality group Eaton Park restaurants at the time. And And again, a great company. I feel like I grew up with the organization, you know, did internships and you know, after college, I worked at human resources a couple of years, then moved into community relations. And, you know, during that period of time again, I've been nurtured by the organization. And I want to say, you know, at about five years I was at a point in time where I felt that I just needed to to broaden my horizons, you know, and it wasn't anything the organization couldn't have treated me better. It was great. But when I looked at my personal goals and I also looked at, you know, just, you know, wanting to feel as broad as I could be. So I started to look at opportunities you know, that would give me a broader segment. I didn't know exactly what that would be. So I started to apply for things that would one, give me a broader life experience, but also broader experiences in terms of professionally and found an opportunity to get way out of the box. I just wanted to be out of the box. I get way out of the box took an opportunity to go to Asia for a year to kind of, and, and there was a program called the Henry Luce Foundation. It's out of New York every year. They send a number of people to live and work in Asia. And they have firsthand experiences. They'll have American leaders to have firsthand experiences in Asia. So that's what I did. And so I had an opportunity to go to Singapore and Hong Kong you know, spend a full year in Asia and what a life changing experience. That was, you know, a broadening experience gave me an opportunity to experience. I had restaurants before, but gave me some more hoots sort of hotel experience during that time. And you know, I wouldn't trade that experience for anything. It was just a, a very wide experience. It was essentially a glorified internship, but it was really learning culture in different, a different part of the world. And so that was an inflection point. One is just being in a place where I was comfortable that treated me really well, but just realizing I needed broader horizon, I need to get out of the box. And so I had this opportunity and I took that opportunity. So went overseas ended up working for a a Chinese based hotel, Hong Kong based hotel firm, a luxury hotel firm. And and so that was a great experience. I would say another inflection point. When I came back, I ended up working for a nonprofit organization. I was going to be on the board and it turns out I ended up working there as a vice president and senior vice president, you know, really understanding kind of arts and entertainment and, you know, that. That industry there's a gentleman by the name of Bill Strickland, who was one of the you know, foremost leaders in kind of social entrepreneurship. And and that was an amazing experience. And so I had to start the nonprofit experience from that standpoint, other than serving on a number of boards, but I then had to make an inflection point to determine, you know, do I want to stay in the field or do I want to move back into the corporate sector and a part of my, you know, part of my vision was to be in a place where I can seamlessly move. At high levels between the sectors, you know, and so, so I wanted to get, came a point in time that, you know, I said, you know, I really do need to get back into the corporate side. And so I was trying to figure out, well, where do I fit in? You know, trying to figure out like. What I do is it, is it finance? I mean, I know finance, but am I, am I a finance guy? If you sit me next to the guy who's like really a finance guy, I'm not that guy, you know, am I a marketing person? Yeah, possibly, you know, am I purchasing? No, not really. Am I, you know, so I went through the whole spectrum and I did HR in the past. And while I enjoyed it, That's just not where I wanted to be. I thought the experience was great, but that's just, I didn't want to be specialized in that, just that space. And so I wanted to, I had to figure out what that would be. And so I looked at my experiences, you know, what were my strengths and did a SWOT analysis on myself. And I looked at my strengths and, you know, looked at my, you know, areas for improvement, looked at what are the opportunities out there? And I wanted to be positioned to lead organizations. I needed to figure out a pathway that would make sense for me personally within these corporate structures, like what would make sense and what was the right industry for me. And while hospitality was amazing hospitality was one of those areas that I, I learned about myself that is so operations oriented. And I wasn't an operator. I just that's just not that was not where I wanted to be long term. And so I wanted to look for something broad. So I did my graduate degree at Carnegie Mellon and had concentrations in marketing and planning. And so what I ended up doing was taking you know, looking at that, looking at what are my strengths. I was very much a big picture person, like an outside in person. Some people look at things that you didn't kind of build out. I kind of look at the bigger picture and drill down. That's just who I am. And so I ended up saying, okay, strategic planning. It's something that I felt really played to my strength, something that was good at had some experience, even not specific work experience. And so I ended up going into strategic planning took a job with PNC, which is one of the major financial services company. And our region was the largest today. I think it's about the fifth largest company banking institution in the country. And so I worked for them in strategic planning. And so to me, that was an inflection point to go from a nonprofit back into the corporate sector. And, and, and I was able to try to position myself to do it into a vice president level role onto the corporate side. So that was an inflection point. Then there were inflection points of going back into the nonprofit to lead an organization, going into hustle, going into healthcare. I became a senior vice president for about 11 years for a major healthcare organization. But I'll say cause we don't have all day to talk. I'll say the biggest thing is an inflection point to leave corporate America to then run Tali, the advanced leadership Institute. Which was a passion project, something I really deeply believed in and had the vision for it and it was a volunteer. But it had to make a determination that was I going to do this, continue to do this as a volunteer, or am I going to be in it? All the way and had an opportunity to do that. So in 2021 I left my healthcare organization who was very supportive. Highmark Health was very supportive of me as, as I was building Tally, but also when I needed investment and right after I shared the major investment I needed that I shared that I'd like to, I also feel like I need to be running it too. So. That was a big inflection point to go from you know, the, the comfort of a major corporate job to the a startup in the nonprofit sector. And so that was a big inflection point in my life.

Lan Elliott:

There are so many great. Themes and what you just talked about that. I wanted to call out a few of them, one of them, which is a personal favorite is living overseas because I think that just broadens perspective in such an important way and helps you understand different people more because, and as much as we have differences, I think you find when you meet people who are so different from you that you're more alike than you might think in the end, I

Evan Frazier:

agree. I definitely, the world got a lot smaller and everywhere you go, there are really good people in this big, well, not so great, you know, and but most people are pretty good.

Lan Elliott:

There are those

Evan Frazier:

folks everywhere, right?

Lan Elliott:

Exactly. Exactly. And I also love the intentionality of your career because you definitely have a theme of wanting to go broader. And so the idea of how you ended up with strategy, strategy makes. So much sense from your first job, how you thought about what it is that was important to you and where you want it to go and just continue to search for that. And I love that intentionality and doing the SWOT analysis on yourself. What a great idea. I don't think I would have ever thought of doing that in my twenties. And the fact that you, you did that on yourself was incredible. And I also love the idea that you shared what you needed with the people around you. And that gave you the opportunity to step out of the corporate world and run Tali full time. Because if you had never said anything to your past employer, There would have never been an opportunity for them to invest in, in your endeavor and for you to have your new, your new life in the way that you're living it. So, so many great themes that come out of what, what you just shared.

Evan Frazier:

Thank you.

Lan Elliott:

I wanted to dig a little more into Tali. Though, because its mission is to cultivate black executive leadership. And I'm curious where the idea for Tali started. If there was like a catalyst you graduated from a lot of prestigious schools. You mentioned the Cornell hotel school. You also have, in addition to Carney Carnegie Mellon, you also have certifications out from Wharton Harvard business school, Harvard law school. But why did you? feel like it was important to start Tali? What, what was not out there?

Evan Frazier:

Yeah. So, so really it was a combination of, of things. One is, Some lived experience. You know, understanding how challenging it is to move between levels in these corporate structures, really challenging, you know, and it's like, well, it shouldn't be this hard. Right. And you know, you kept figuring that there are ways that we can make that a little bit easier for folks to navigate particularly as a person of color, because it's not the same experience. There are other factors that play play themselves out that you never learn about in business school. You typically don't talk about them in organizations, but they're there. And often people don't recognize that. So that, that was one. We in Pittsburgh, I was living in Pittsburgh and grew up here as well. And you know, there was a point in time 20 years before, before Tally started where I can almost list out every major company and say the name of one or two C suite level executives, top executives who are African Americans. And then here it is 20 years later that almost didn't exist. You know, there were hardly any of us in those kinds of roles and felt a real sense of responsibility. There was a, there are a group of colleagues that I had. You know, one was very much a mentor and someone in the nonprofit space. Another person was in the foundation world. And then of course one of my corporate mentors had started something 10 years before. to really look at how do we support black middle managers and help them to grow into leadership roles. And so all of that was in the back of my head, right? But at the at the time, our city was recognizing, look, for us to be able to grow, we need to be able to retain and attract You know, African americans into our community and leadership, but there just didn't seem to be a mechanism built that was you know, designed to do it. And so I figured, you know if it's going to happen, we got to build, I got to build it, you know? And, and so with some colleagues just having some common understanding even a couple of years before started tally You know, we talked about, you know, you know, what if we created this program that would, you know, help to invest in black talent here? And you know, fast forwarding a couple of years later, I was meeting with the certain on the board of one of the major foundations in our area, the president was in my office and we're sitting there talking about you know, what can we do to really move the needle in the black community? And he was, you know, sharing some information, you know, he talked about the conversations and at that point in time in my life, I was done with talk. You know, I was like, I can't do another conversation. Look, I was like, I was like, you know, talk is cheap, you know, and and there's a lot of talk in the community, but then nothing happens. And I said, you know, I want to do something tangible. Let's do something different. Let's invest in black talent. You know, let's stop talking about it. Let's just let's invest in black talent. And so I shared the concept that had been percolating in my head over the last couple of years. Just inspired by friend call a conversation with some colleagues and mentors, you know, about what the need is. And he got excited. I said, okay, now you got to give me some time to write this down because I want, I need the full concept to, to maintain its integrity. And I don't want to pick and choose pieces of it. It needs the full thing. And so that summer I was dropping my son off my youngest son off up in Boston at a camp, and then my daughter was performing in New York. And so I took the train to New York. And with me, I took my notepad and I took my laptop. And I said, I'm going to get this done. I've been thinking about it for a couple of years. I just did it and just took my whole trip and just took the time to do a, it ended up being about a 10 page concept paper. And from there, when I got back to Pittsburgh, I started to socialize it around the region, you know other black professionals would, would socialize it with corporate leaders foundation leaders, and everyone was excited about it. They said, but they said two things that really resonated. One, they said for this to work, you have to have corporate buy in. You know, this can't be an independent program that, you know, is out there that people just go through and the company's not buying into it because you need that connection so that the companies are investing in the talent and that's like, that makes a lot of sense. And I took it to heart. The second thing that came out of the socializing, this is over about five or six months. They said really the concept that I came up with had come up with, you really need to have a strong academic institution, you know, so I talked in my initial concept paper about it being a model for business schools, you know, that of how business schools can create social change and help to facilitate that. And so they said you needed to have a really strong academic partner. And fortunately at the time just had served on as a trustee at Carnegie Mellon university for about six years, a couple of terms in, had just rolled off a year or two beforehand. So I went back to the Dean of the business school at the time it's the Tepper school of business and shared it with the Dean. Dean got excited. He was like, yes, let's do this. And so I started the following month meeting with his executive education team. And we, we, over the next two years, we build out what we call the executive leadership Academy. So we started the conversations in 2017, early 2017, and in January of 2019. We rolled out our first cohort of 23 cohort members to be a part of the executive leadership Academy. And so that's, that's how we got started. Yeah. And over the years you know, again did it as a volunteer. At the time I was working as a senior vice president of community affairs for, for like I said, a major healthcare organization. So I was literally working two full time jobs. I mean, we're talking 18 hours a day. I mean it was, it was, it was tough. It was tough. But you know what, it was worth every penny. And But in, and there was a lot of questions in community, you know, are there enough black folks out in the community that we can keep doing cohorts and yada, yada, yada. And at the end of the day, he said, you know what? I'm not sure, but we're gonna go find out, you know, and we'll have to take it as far as we can. And we created essentially a world class executive leadership program, you know, in partnership with Carnegie Mellon, where we use their faculty, but we also use faculty from across the country and bring them in people who are scholars and specialize in the areas that we were building our team for. And it was customized to support black professionals. And so that's what we did. Once we created the Institute first thing we did was we created an emerging leaders program because we were dealing initially with executives and mid level managers. Who had higher level aspirations, but there were others in the organization and in our community that were at that level that needed some support to get there. And there were some leaders that just needed cultivation. And so we asked companies to also invest in emerging leaders. And so that was next. We started emerging leaders cohort. And then last year in 2023 we started our first national cohort where we bring people from across the country here to Pittsburgh in, in the CMU for that time and as a hybrid program. So part of it is here in person, a couple of weeks in person and other time across the programming it's virtual. And so we created a hybrid component. And so that's kind of where we are today is where we're in that process of building out nationally continue to build locally and we're seeing incredible outcomes. Outcomes like we track people for two years. And so for, just to give you a quick example, we track based on, you know, promotions and you know, taking on promotions and significant responsibility. And what we found as we did that after two years, after first cohort, 87 percent of them had received promotions or significant additional responsibilities within that two year period, we looked at our 2020 cohort. It was 96%.

Lan Elliott:

Wow. That is really incredible, and I love the story of how, how it came to be one of the things we've talked about in the past is that there are a number of hurdles to senior leadership for underrepresented groups, and I know you focus on getting black executives to senior leadership. Yeah, yeah. But we've also talked about some of the themes are are universal. So I'm curious, what are some of the things that you teach at the emerging leaders level versus the executive leadership academy? What are the kinds of things that are out there?

Evan Frazier:

So for the emerging leaders, it's a little bit more skill based, right? Executive level, it's definitely more soft skills. Yeah, yeah. But so for emerging leaders you'll deal with you know, intro to negotiations, you'll deal with you know, understand your personal brand, you know you know, topics, we cover topics we do, we do some finance topics to make sure people have the finance. Financial acumen to be, it'll be successful even if you're not a finance person or in that discipline. So there's a piece of that in there. We did, we have things on innovation and on management and leading and, and you know, a lot of the folks they are either early managers. It might be individual individual contributors who ultimately want to lead people and lead teams and groups. And so we, we tried to do more skill based stuff. For our emerging leaders and you know, self reflection as well which is a part of all of our programs. But, but I would say that would probably be the big distinction for our executive program. Again, we add in the executive coaches as well. But we, we really delve more into sponsorship and why that's so important because in order to be able to break the ceiling and move into C suite level roles, top level roles. People don't understand very often that most of the time you can't do it just on your own skills and ability. It really is based on relationships and you have to have a sponsor, someone who's in the circle, who is willing to say, you know, put their capital forth, you know, their social capital and say, you know, that's my person over there. I believe they can do the job, you know, and I believe, I believe in their leadership, you know, so you have to have an understanding of that very often, you know, even executives of people, you know, you know, like to do it on their own accord and, and hard work is essential, building your skills and performing is essential. They're all prerequisites, but that doesn't guarantee you that you're going to move into those senior levels. The way that you do that is you have that stuff. But you also at the same time, you're building these relationships and you're gaining visibility and finding ways so that people understand the value that you bring to the organization. Because at the end of the day, someone has to vouch to pull you into that circle. And that's been a big challenge for not only African Americans, but people of color as a whole.

Lan Elliott:

Yeah, I think that's true. And women as well. I think there, I, yeah, I, I do think, and I want to dig into that a little bit because I think when I was coming up, But people had heard about mentors. I had heard about a mentor. I had no idea how to go find one, but I was lucky enough to have a few along the way and, and mentors are great, right? Because they are helping you with the blind spots. The thing is that you don't need, know that you need help with. I had not heard about a sponsor or sometimes they're called a champion or an advocate. I hadn't really heard about this as a thing, much less have it occur to me that I needed to cultivate some of these, not just one, but several of them. And it wasn't until very late in my career that I understood that these decisions, these promotions, these key assignments A lot of those kinds of things are done. Not just you and your boss sitting in your boss's office. A lot of those are actually done in committee. And it never occurred to me to figure out who's on that committee with my boss. Who are my boss's peers? Like who else needs to know me? And And and know about my work other than just my boss, because even if your boss is your supporter, that's usually you need more than one voice speaking for you in the room, and nobody ever told me that. So I love that you are having these discussions and sharing this. Could you share maybe a tip of in terms of what's the right way to To find a sponsor. How do you cultivate a sponsor? Get one.

Evan Frazier:

So it's funny because we spent a lot of time talking about that as we're developing Tali, you know, and one of my mentors, I have many. And like you said, you have to have, you want to cultivate a team of mentors. And I've been so blessed in my life. I have, I've had a team, but one of my mentors, especially in the corporate side, his name is Greg Spencer. And you know, he was a big advocate for. You know, mentors, you know, having you know, trying to find mentors for he's passionate about it. I mean you know, I, you know, I'm thinking I'm like the only person, but he probably has 50 or a hundred people he's mentored over the years. Right. And so he's one of those super champions that way. And you know, as we were building tally and he was very instrumental as kind of the founding co chair, as we were building tally and one of the things that we spent a lot of time talking about is do we. Bring on executive mentors, or do we bring on sponsors? What do we call it? You know, and where we landed was that, you know, you can't really just create a sponsor program and expect that people just because you're assigned, you become a sponsor. It's almost like you have to earn that. And so we said, okay, let, let's bring on executive mentors because people can commit to being a mentor. But in order for a person to commit to being a sponsor, they have to, there has to be a relationship with the person. They have to have confidence in the person because they're exhibiting their social capital. Mentor can give you some good reflection, good advice, but if you're asking them to sponsor you, they're putting their personal reputation on the line to say, this is, I'm endorsing this person here. And and that's different and it's not fair to put them in that position. if there's not a relationship. So what we do is we, we bring on executive mentors. We let the mentors in the mentees know that the goal is to create sponsorship, but you got to earn that, you know, and you earn that by creating the relationship. You develop the relationship, the person you build trust, you know, trust is very important. And you know, ultimately our hope, a hope and goal is that the mentors that are connected to one another ultimately are willing and find value in. Being able to sponsor their, their mentee, or in some, some case, they call them a protege, but yeah, that, that whole idea is very, very, very different.

Lan Elliott:

Yeah. And I love the point that you make, which is that the main difference between a mentor and a sponsor is that a sponsor is going to put their own reputation on the line for you. So in order to develop a sponsor, they really need to believe in you and not just be willing to support you, but to, like you said, expend their social capital, their reputation to support you in front of other leaders. And that's really where the people start to get advanced, right? Because other people are saying you need to talk to him or she's really great. Like we need to put her forward for this. Yeah, important.

Evan Frazier:

This person would be great for your board. This person would be excellent in this new elevated role. This person would be, you know yeah, absolutely. And because if you put, you, you put your reputation out there and they don't deliver, then, you know, it looks bad. It may be hard for you to, then, you know, when you go back to say, well, how about this person, you know, they might be looking at you a little bit differently, right. And so that's, it's really important that there's trust there, you know, in, in those circumstances.

Lan Elliott:

Yeah. So really important. And, you know, I wish more young people knew about it and knew that it was important that they need to do it. I think it's starting to become more prevalent out there. But thank you. Thank you for sharing that.

Evan Frazier:

Absolutely. Absolutely.

Lan Elliott:

As I suspected, we are running short on time because I always lose track of time when I'm talking with you. I can never get enough time with you. But I had a few final questions that I wanted to run through quickly with you. One of them is how does one distinguish themselves because you teach a lot of great skills, soft skills at Tali, but I think the rules have changed for everyone since the pandemic before the pandemic, you kind of knew what was expected. You were expected to be hardworking. You had to know your stuff. You had to put in your time. And, and, and be seen as a hard worker. And then we had the pandemic. Everyone started working from home because we had to. Right. And then now people are tiptoeing back to the office. How, how does a person distinguish themselves in the post pandemic world?

Evan Frazier:

Well, I think, I think one way to do it is you know, when everyone else wants to work remote showing up, being there in person gives you an opportunity to build relationships. It's harder to build relationships online. You know, there's, there's nothing like in person interaction. And so that you know, that is one way that you know, people, especially young people you know, as they're starting their careers, you know, it's, it's cool to work remotely, but you know, if you really want to build relationships, if you really want to understand the culture of the organization, understand the players, you got to show up, you got to be there. And so that was, that would be one recommendation. To distinguish yourself. Yeah, absolutely.

Lan Elliott:

I love that. And maybe it's an opportunity not just to talk to your boss, but also talk to your boss's boss. You never know who's gonna be walking by.

Evan Frazier:

Yeah. You need, you need visibility. You want others to know you, not just your immediate boss.'cause sometimes your immediate boss, you know you know, sometimes they're great and sometimes they're, you know not necessarily real supportive. Or could feel threatened if you know, if you're being too uply mobile. And so you gotta know not only your boss, but you gotta know the team above them.

Lan Elliott:

Absolutely. Absolutely. And I know sometimes it can be depressing to go in and, you know, you're the only cubicle or you're one of very few cubicles. But on the other hand, you're one of very few occupied cubicles. So, you know, that, that can also be a good thing.

Evan Frazier:

Absolutely. Absolutely.

Lan Elliott:

Evan. What would be advice that you would give to your younger self? And I love that this changes. I think as, as we go through different phases in our life, we have different advice we'd give today. What would be your advice to your 22 year old self?

Evan Frazier:

Wow. That's a, that is a great, great question. I would, I would say I was really fortunate that I, I had mentors and sponsors at a very, very young age. And I didn't, even though I didn't know what sponsorship meant. It was in my vocabulary to much later. I had those things, right? I had sponsors that were, you know supporting me in those kinds of things. But I think had I understood that connection earlier I think that would have been very, very helpful. You know understanding the importance of not just having one mentor, but building a team of mentors in different ways and understanding what sponsorship means, you so I think I would say that would be advice for, for, for a younger, a younger self. Do think in, you know, over the years I've had opportunities to kind of build skills. But I think as a leader, you know, whether you're in the nonprofit, corporate, whatever your interest is, you know, getting some early financial skills. Is very, very helpful. No matter what industry you go into, if you want to be a leader and you want to rise, you got to understand. The financial impact and you have to understand numbers and how they drive value. And even the nonprofit side, you can't deliver, you know, you can't deliver any kind of sustained programming without understanding finances. And so, so I would say, you know, You know, just you know, a few more if I, if I could have taken a deeper dive there early on, I probably would have done a little bit more of that too.

Lan Elliott:

Great advice. Well, Evan, we've reached the last question and you have actually provided so much great advice. Could you perhaps share one last nugget of advice? Just keeping in mind that the mission of DEI advisors is around empowering personal success. What would you share with our audience?

Evan Frazier:

So what I would share with the audience is really a concept. I had written a book that was published in 2008 called most likely to succeed the Frazier formula for success. And I'll boil it down to a simple formula and that is that really a success is a combination where I should see the alignment between your vision, building a plan that's aligned to your vision and not attitude, but the right attitude. So success really is a combination of your vision, building a plan towards that vision in the right attitude. And I found that no matter what field you go into. What industry, you know formula when you apply it in a proper way, where you're really taking the time to understand vision, understand purpose and, and really defining it and building it from that perspective. It really is a powerful tool. It really does prepare people for success, no matter what it is they aspire to do. And so that, that's what that's the nugget I'll leave. Success is Vision plan in the right attitude.

Lan Elliott:

Wonderful. That is a wonderful note to end with. So I knew that you would have so much wonderful advice to share whether you're with our audience. So thank you very much, Evan, for being on today.

Evan Frazier:

And thank you so much. Really appreciate it. Really enjoy spending time with

Lan Elliott:

you. And for our audience, if you've enjoyed this conversation with Evan, I hope you will go to our website, DEI advisors. org, and you'll find many more interviews with industry leaders. Thank you so much. Thanks again, Evan.

Evan Frazier:

My pleasure.