2008 WFF Leadership Award
Sponsored by Ecolab
Robin Robison
Chili’s Regional Director
Chili’s Grill and Bar
In her role as Regional Director, Robin oversees a total of 83
Chili’s restaurants in Northern California, Nevada and Utah.
Robin started her career with Chili’s in 1986 as a server. This
was shortly after graduating from the University of Denver with a B.A. in Education, and
while teaching a summer program for underprivileged children.
Robin soon put her teaching skills to good use at Chili’s as a New
Restaurant Opening Trainer. She then entered restaurant management, learning about day-to-day
operations and people development. A couple of years later, Robin was promoted to General Manager
of a Chili’s restaurant. She broke new ground for Chili’s just a few more years later when she
became the company’s first Regional Training Director.
Robin thrived in this new role as she combined her background in
education with her operations experience. Perceived as a direct individual that can present truth
in an appropriate and helpful manner, she demonstrated the ability to blend people into teams early
in her career as a restaurant leader, creating strong morale and spirit. She developed effective
training programs for team members and managers and created various workshops, which improved
service to guests and increased retention of Team Members.
In her position on Brinker’s Diversity Task Force, where she has
been responsible for the Western Region (more than 195 restaurants) diversity efforts, she
effectively communicates strategies and experiences in hiring and developing ethnicity and gender
within the organization. Due to her extraordinary leadership, her region ranked number one in
ethnicity, gender-female and in retention, at the unit manager level, year after year.