Norman Jenkins, founder and president of Capstone Development, spent 16 years at Marriott International, eventually as a senior executive and corporate officer, and headed up the company’s diversity ownership initiative. He formed Maryland-based hospitality developer and owner Capstone Development in 2009. HOTELS asked Jenkins to share his thoughts on the state of diversity and inclusion in hospitality.
HOTELS: Many companies claim to be committed to diversity, yet a recent Castell Project study suggests very little progress has been made. What is preventing more inclusion within hotel leadership?
Norman Jenkins: I used to do a lot of recruiting for Marriott. We went to majority schools and historically black colleges and universities, and we found that hotels and hotels companies weren’t typically at top of the list for diverse candidates. The best ones had their pick of jobs, and they usually went with banks and accounting firms and blue chip companies.
Lodging hasn’t typically marketed itself very well to diverse professionals. That’s the first challenge. If you’re in accounting or finance or marketing, you don’t immediately think of hotels. You think of accounting firms, finance firms, top-notch marketing or sales firms. When people think of hotels, they often think of service jobs. I didn’t think of hotels when I got into the business. What I knew about hotels: I stayed in them, and my grandmother spent 20 years in New York City cleaning rooms. That’s your view of hotels.
If you could show accounting, finance, legal and marketing specialists that there were great jobs throughout operations, I think you could change the tide.
The second challenge is that in the hospitality business we see a lot of people who grow up in the business and move through it. At certain levels people leave other industries and come in — finance, information technology, legal, etc. But there are not a significant number of black people who make those moves. So that speaks more to who those brands are recruiting.
Are we actively recruiting these professionals at the senior and above level? The answer is no, we’re doing a poor job. You find some exceptions at the senior level — I was a senior executive at Marriott. But it’s not specific to lodging, it’s a problem across corporate America. When you ask why we don’t have more Latino or black associates at the senior level, the answer is “we just can’t find them.” I don’t accept that. I think there is talent out there. They are probably working in other industries, but there is talent to be had.
If you put a big challenge in front of the industry, we will figure out a way to solve it. We haven’t solved this one yet because it hasn’t been an organizational priority.
H: How can companies move the needle?
NJ: Being intentional about the mission. What I mean by that is you actually have to do it. You can’t talk about it, you can’t have to say, “By end of year we are going to recruit X number of people and fast track them to becomes GMs in two years,” or “Bring in X number of middle managers who will become senior managers by X time,” and monitor that progress.
We need to train them in the hotel world and give them the support and mentoring they need to succeed. We need to sprinkle in some senior executives from other industries and teach them the hotel business.
With this, now the people at lower levels would have some people available to mentor them, people who look like them, to give them something to aspire to. Once you recruit, support and train at every level, then you will see real system change in the industry.
And it’s not just a commitment to hire, but to make sure you have a supplier diversity program and are putting pressure on suppliers. As a hotel owner, I spend hundreds of hours to ensure our suppliers are diverse and have diversity programs in place. One of my jobs at Marriott was to increase women- and minority-owned hotels, and we made great progress. Brands can be instrumental in changing that narrative.
H: Do you think the recent protests will result in systematic change?
NJ: I like to think they will make a difference. Corporations do a wonderful job of plotting out strategy and identifying business imperatives, and they do an even better job of executing on those imperatives. If diverse hiring becomes a priority, it will be just as important as any other key strategic initiative. When executive compensation is tied to specific results, it will absolutely happen. But if it’s aspirational, something that would be nice to do, it has a 50/50 chance of happening.