Krissy Gathright Interviewed by Rachel Humphrey

Welcome, Rachel. I'm delighted to be here with you today.

Sure, Rachel. Well, it started way back. I probably shouldn't say that because it'll date me, but originally I didn't start out wanting to be in hospitality. I hadn't had much experience in hospitality other than traveling with friends and family on vacations, but I knew that I wanted to be in business. So I went to business school, I went to the University of Virginia, and I majored in accounting. Soon after college, I went to work for EY as an auditor, and my clients just happened to be real estate and insurance clients. For all the people that are extremely passionate and interested in insurance out there, I'm not meaning to disparage your industry, but I really gravitated towards real estate and fell in love with it. One of the clients happened to offer me a job ultimately, and I went to work with UDR, which is a multi-family REIT, as a regional controller and ultimately asset manager. I really enjoyed learning about the real estate business, how to create value, and gaining additional experience. Then one of my other clients, Cornerstone Realty Income Trust, had just listed on the New York Stock Exchange, and they were looking for someone to come run investor relations for them. As a young person, I thought, I have accounting experience, a bit of asset management experience, and while I loved my current role, I thought that might be a great opportunity to expand my experience and understand what it was like to be involved with investors and analysts and be part of a public company. So I decided to take the leap and move over to Cornerstone. About a year into that role, the CEO at the time said, 'You know what, I'm thinking about starting a hospitality REIT. Would you like to be a part of that new company?' I was in my early 20s, and it was exciting to think about going into a new industry even though I knew nothing about it. I wasn't the only person he approached about joining the new company. There were several other individuals who had been with Cornerstone for a while, but they were more comfortable in their role and thought maybe this other company would be a little bit of a side project that potentially wouldn't go anywhere. So I took the risk and decided to go ahead and sign up. I became the first employee of what back then was known as Apple Suites. Eight different hospitality REITs later that we ended up creating, several that we merged, several that we sold, and one that we ended up listing on the New York Stock Exchange, which is the largest select-service and extended-stay hospitality REIT still in existence today. All that came from an opportunity to take a risk and try something new. As soon as I got involved with hospitality, I fell in love with it. I fell in love with the opportunity to meet, connect with, and serve people. But also, being on the REIT ownership side, I had the opportunity to be involved with analysis and numbers and marrying the two together, finding ways to create value. So that's how I ultimately ended up as one of the executives of Apple Hospitality REIT and now a board member for Apple.

Well, absolutely. I think that being able to assess risk and think big picture and always be looking around the corner is one of the things that I've always felt was important, not only in the hospitality industry but in life. So when I think about whether it be a particular economic environment or how the company is in the economic environment, the first thing I try to do is educate myself as much as possible on what success means, what are the things that the company needs to do, that our employees need to do, that the industry ultimately needs to do to be successful and long-term sustainable. In thinking about that, you also have to keep your peripheral vision on what could be the potential disruptors that could be lurking down the road. When we set up Apple Hospitality and we had those different REITs, as we created each additional portfolio, we learned every day more about the hospitality industry, more about structuring a real estate ownership vehicle, more about if you take on more leverage, that's inevitably more risky; if you invest your funds in a more narrow pool of assets versus a broader, more diversified pool of assets, that's more risky; if you rely on just one operator or one brand, that's more risky than spreading the relationships amongst strong, high-quality operators and strong, high-quality brands. As we made mistakes along the way, as we navigated through recessions, we learned. We didn't always make or execute or plan every decision perfectly, but as we continued to grow as a company and evolve as a leader within the industry, we learned from missteps. I think that's the most important thing you can do. You can assess risk and keep an eye out for other challenges and prepare for those, but you can't always prepare for everything. So I think the most important things for me in being successful over the long term are learning and educating yourself, listening, being aware, not trying to make decisions in a vacuum, relying on your team. Your team could mean people within your own company, people within the brands, within the operators, within the industry. Really bringing a collective knowledge to the table in how you assess situations and then working together to make sure you're ultimately making the best possible, informed decision based on the facts and circumstances of what you see now, what you could potentially see in front of you, and what you've learned from the past. Does that make sense?

Yeah, public speaking is incredibly important. When I think about public speaking, I go back to my path to leadership. As I continued to advance in my career, a lot of that public speaking actually started on a smaller scale. Just being able to connect with as many people as possible. I mentioned the importance of learning and how that helps you find ways to create value and teach others and create a positive impact. But in order for you to learn, it's important for you to speak with a lot of people, right? It's important for you to have those one-on-one conversations, and that's where it originally starts: just getting comfortable talking to people at all different levels and putting yourself out there and creating opportunities for you to have conversations. Even if I go back to my early days at EY, one of the reasons that ultimately I was able to move on to my clients and ultimately have the opportunity to work with Apple or create Apple is because as a young staff member, I had to go into audit engagements, and it was important for me not just to be behind the scenes doing ticks and ties with numbers, but to go in to meet with the CEO or the CFO and make sure that I had the opportunity to face time, to take care of the business at hand, but also when there was the opportunity at the right and appropriate time, to really learn from them and to be able to build that relationship and rapport. You take that all along as you continue to grow in your leadership roles and responsibilities. As the forums got bigger, I started joining industry councils, brand councils, AHLA councils, and had additional leadership opportunities. Quite often, very early on, I was the only woman in the room. But I didn't really think about being the only woman in the room. I mean, as I walked into the room, obviously it was going to be obvious that I was the only woman in the room, but I always walked into the room going, 'Okay, what at the end of the day are we trying to accomplish in this particular meeting, and how can my experience and knowledge add value?' It won't add value if I don't speak about it. So having the education and the background and being informed gave me the confidence that when there was a particular topic that would come up where I felt that I could add value to the conversation, I wasn't going to speak just to speak, but I was going to speak when I felt that I could add value to the conversation, when I felt others could learn from the information that I was able to share. Fast forward, as I continued to grow in leadership roles, I also felt it was important. I saw the value of being able to contribute to important topics or to be able to elevate and lift others up, especially women. That inspired me, and I took that energy with me to the stage or to the meeting or to the forum, because I saw as an end goal that if I can just by sharing a little bit of my story or a little bit of my insight help motivate and inspire others, then that gave me the passion and energy to raise my hand to be in front of the audience. I will say, public speaking, I know very few people for whom it is not difficult. It can be daunting. But I would say start small and continue to increase the opportunities where you're speaking in front of one person, five people, 10 people, 15, then ultimately hundreds or thousands of people. The more that you do it, the easier it gets, at least in my personal experience. It just gives you additional confidence. It's just like practice with sports; you just got to continue to put yourself out there. That is the key too. Sometimes it is so daunting for people that they don't want to take the leap to actually do it, but once they do it and they have the experience and they see the impact they can have, I think that really builds that confidence, so the next time you go do it, it's a lot easier. That's what I would say.

I'd also say, Rachel, I mean, I would say the same thing for me and vice versa. Hearing people like yourself speak and hearing my team members speak, and when you know Catherine Leaguer was the head of the AHLA or other women who were industry leaders, hearing from their experience and their learnings energizes me as well, because there's always some tidbit that I would take out of that. So I think it's a virtuous cycle in that.

I think mentors and champions are of critical importance. I will say, as a woman in the industry, I've had mentors and champions who are men, who are women, who are at different times superior in terms of their stature or their rank or their position in the industry. I would also say I've even had mentors that are peers of mine. Mentor for me means someone that gives counsel, gives advice, and supports you. It doesn't necessarily have to be someone that you report to or that you look up to; they could be people all around you. It could be people in the industry, people in your philanthropic roles, people in your everyday life, family members. All of those categories are people that have been my mentors, teachers in the past, people that have imparted their learnings to me. That has been critically important in all of my life. Maybe it's because my mom was a teacher. I think it's critically important to surround yourself, listen to people, learn from people, especially people that are not necessarily in the same day-to-day role that you're in. Champions, I think, is more than just being a mentor. I've been a mentor and a champion, and I've had people that have been mentors and champions for me. A champion is someone that really goes a step above and beyond just providing counsel, advice, and support. A champion is really someone who helps create opportunity for you, helps open doors, and is your advocate. Those again have been both men and women in all different aspects. An example of a champion opportunity would be someone coming forward on one of the brands and saying, 'You have done such a phenomenal job, and we very much appreciate your role on some of these advisory councils. We've never had a woman be president of any of the individual brand councils, but because of your style, your balance, and your approach, we think you would be wonderful to be the first woman president.' That ended up being the Courtyard Franchise Advisory Council, which I served as president proudly for 10 years. That was a brand advocate who ultimately went to the person in charge of making those decisions and said we want to ask her to do it. So that's opening a path. Or a friend of mine who also knew of my leadership capabilities nominated me for a board. It's a not-for-profit board, but it's a very influential board in the area. For me, it was great because I had the chance to exercise my leadership skills and be involved in a cause that I was very proud of. But ultimately, that board being very influential and that person advocating for me, and then I accepted the role on the board, opened up so many additional opportunities for me in other leadership opportunities. It's just those people taking the time to not only give advice and counsel but actually say, 'I think you need to talk to that person for this particular role and responsibility.' So for me, once I was able to get to a position where I felt that I had more influence, then I felt it was incumbent upon me to actually go and use that influence for good and to be a mentor and a champion. I'm very proud that as a board member of Apple Hospitality REIT, we've been very strong supporters of women and the senior women in the industry. Two or three of the women I mentored and championed are now C-suite executives at Apple Hospitality. That's a large percentage for a REIT owner in the industry. They're continuing to do that, continuing to pay it forward. You do it, someone else does it, they do it. It just creates this additional energy behind elevating and uplifting. At the end of the day, if we have more mentors and more champions, then we create more opportunity.

Yeah, you did mention one of the key things in there. You're right about the hospitality industry, and that's why I love it so much: all the relationships and people wanting to help people, people wanting to serve people, and people wanting to better people. So yeah, usually if it's someone from the hospitality industry who reaches out and has a request, I will move mountains to try to get it done. But with that being said, I think that one of the things that you learn as you continue to take on greater roles and responsibilities is that you do have to say no occasionally, otherwise you're not managing your life. I've never really liked the work-life balance paradigm. I always see it as a work-life continuum. It's just life, and work is a piece of it. Your personal, your friends and family, your philanthropy, your spiritual, all of those things are pieces of your life. It's a matter of making sure that I focus on the priorities. Family is certainly a priority of mine. As I look back on my career, there are always going to be some sacrifices that you make in trying to manage all the different roles and responsibilities. But if I look back, it's the critical things. For example, with my kids growing up, I have three boys. I knew that I wasn't going to be able to make it to every school event, every function, every athletic event. But I did prioritize the ones that I felt were the most important so that I could be present for those, and I enjoyed being part of those activities. But I knew that I would have to give on some things. The same thing with work commitments. There are certain conferences, certain investor meetings, certain things with the team that you need to make sure you are there for. But the team also understood that there were going to be certain things because you chose on the family side or other areas that you needed to make it to, that you weren't going to be able to make it to everything. I think the critical piece of that is what I said: team. You need a support system that has an understanding that you're going to do your best even if you're not there 100% of the time. You're also going to have people, hopefully on your career side, that you have mentored and inspired, and they are totally capable of being able to fill in if you're not there. That becomes a leadership opportunity for them. On the family side, you have your husband, who's been an incredible support, and a group of friends and extended family. So if there were things that I was traveling and couldn't make, I had a family member. It's all a matter of making sure you understand your priorities, also utilizing your support system, and being upfront and honest and hopefully finding an environment that has flexibility. At Apple, it's really important and critically important for us to understand that, going back to the philosophy of hospitality, if you serve your associates well, they're going to serve your guests well, and everybody's going to keep coming back. The same thing as a manager, as a leader: you are not going to achieve the success or the goals that you want as a company if you're not taking care of the people that are every day there. They're not just employees, they're not just associates, they're people, and they have different things that they prioritize too. So just having that open, honest conversation about those things really helped me to be able to navigate through. I do think one other little tip is that in my schedule, and I'm a calendar person, I think it's important to stay as organized as you possibly can to make sure that you're not overwhelming yourself. But in my schedule, I do quite often build in time that's just free time that gives me a chance to catch up on things, or maybe if there's a meeting that I wouldn't normally be able to squeeze in but it's important, I can put it in there. I also make sure that I put in self-care time. I'll actually put on the calendar, and it may be a facial, it may be a massage, it may be a glass of wine with a girlfriend, or just a walk with my kid or my dog. I do think that you have to calendar just as much some of the things to take care of yourself as you would all the other responsibilities that you have.

But you were there. I will tell you a little story. I did, once a year, I tried to make it to be a mystery reader. There was one that I ended up volunteering for, and I didn't realize it was actually sewing gingerbread men together. I'm not very good at sewing, but I did my best. I look over, and there's the mom beside me, and she in five seconds had all the things sewed and it was perfect. I'm like, oh my gosh. But it turns out she was a surgeon, and this was the one time that she actually had a chance to be there. It just so happened she was a little better at sewing than me.

What you just said was the most critical piece there: you have to take your path into your own hands. Go out there and first of all, be passionate about what you do. Passion is so important. When you have passion and you lead with passion, it inspires others who want to come along with you. So live your life with passion and follow your passions. For me, all the phases of my life have been guided by ultimately wanting to make a positive impact on people, wanting to help people, whether it's philanthropy, my roles at Apple, in the industry, or just with friends and family. So learn, teach, live your life with passion, create your own path, but seek help from others. Don't feel like you have to do it by yourself.

Absolutely. I look forward to coming back and doing Board 2.0. Sounds good.