Follow-Up: Pancake Landing
from
January/February 2006
by Laura J. Finn
Michael Montelongo is trading airplanes for pancakes. Since he appeared in “Where to Find Hispanic Directors” (
Corporate Board Member
,
May/June 2005
), he has left his job as CFO of the U.S. Air Force, joined Sodexho, a food and facilities management company in Gaithersburg, Maryland, as senior vice president of strategic marketing—and signed on to the board of Denny’s, where he also serves on the audit committee.
Denny’s is the restaurant chain that’s been working hard to overcome the damage caused by racial-bias problems some years back, notably one involving African American Secret Service agents who had to wait far longer for their breakfasts than their white co-workers at an eatery in Annapolis, Maryland.
The Denny’s board brought in a new CEO, Jim Adamson, to give the company a better image, and he hired Rachelle Hood, who has spent a career on this touchy issue, as chief diversity officer. Adamson has since left, and Nelson J. Marchioli now runs the company. Hood continues to push diversity training. The board has been through big changes.
In 1993, when the scandals hit, all the directors but one were male. The exception, Vera King Farris, an African American, is the only survivor of that board. The eight newcomers include another African American woman, one African American man, one white woman, four white men—and one Hispanic, Montelongo, 50. Says he: “The board manifests and reflects a strong sense of diversity in thought, gender, and ethnicity.”
