Stronger at the Seams: My Journey Out of the Background

At this summer’s CHART conference in Redondo Beach, I attended a breakout session titled, “The Beauty in Imperfection: A Kintsugi-Inspired Workshop,” led by Kelly McCutcheon of Whataburger and Kim Evans of Hopdoddy Burger Bar. I wasn’t quite sure what to expect in terms of learning, but I knew I would be in good hands with Kim and Kelly guiding us.

The workshop began with each attendee selecting a ceramic bowl from a collection outside the room. After taking our seats, we were instructed to wrap our bowls in paper and then carefully strike them with a hammer. Everyone at my table seemed a bit hesitant at first, exchanging glances and small laughs, but eventually the first person gave their bowl a good whack, and the rest of us followed. Some bowls, like mine, broke into just three or four pieces, while others shattered into more than a dozen.

When I peeled back the paper, I paused to examine what I had done, and I was curious about what would follow. That’s when we learned the next step would be to reassemble the pieces, and it was then that the real lesson began.

Using glue and tape, I fit the three main sections back into place. Although a few slivers were too small to reattach, the bowl returned mostly to its original shape. Once the glue had set, we were told to brush gold paint along the seams so that the cracks, instead of disappearing, stood out as shining lines. The purpose of these lines was to draw one’s eye not to what had been broken but to what had been restored.

This process was inspired by Kintsugi, the Japanese art of repairing pottery with gold. More than a technique, it is a philosophy that says imperfections do not lessen an object’s value, but rather they become the very features that make it beautiful and unique. Kelly and Kim reminded us that the same is true in our lives. The cracks we carry – the failures, the flaws, the painful breaks – are not weaknesses to conceal but evidence of resilience, transformation, and growth.

As I looked down at what I had pieced back together, I realized how much this exercise reflected my own journey with this organization over the past 23 years. Because here’s the thing about CHART: if you let it, it will change you in the most profound ways.

Choosing the back row

I first learned about CHART back in 2002 when the winter conference was held in Seattle, the city where I work. Someone else from my company had been scheduled to attend, but when they were unexpectedly let go a month before the conference, our HR Director arranged for me to take their place. I had no idea what CHART was (I didn’t even know it was an acronym), but it was taking place at a hotel right up the hill from our office, so I reluctantly agreed to go.

At that point in my career, I had been training for a while, but I still felt unsteady in the role. My path into hospitality had been anything but linear. I had started college as a math major with the intent on becoming an actuary. OK, that’s softening it a bit because I didn’t think you would believe me…I had dreamed of being an actuary. I wanted nothing more to quietly sit in a quiet office, quietly calculate insurance rates, and speak to as few people as possible (preferably none). That suited me perfectly at the time: invisible, safe, predictable. Oh, and most importantly, quiet.

Life, as it turned out, had other plans. After graduating from college, I ended up working in the very non-quiet restaurant industry, yet I still managed to eventually slip into a position at Ivar’s that kept me largely unseen. Working as a quick-service trainer let me build resources that allowed others to shine while I stayed in the background.

When I arrived at the conference, it was so jarring to me sit in the general sessions and see other trainers (and then CHART board members) like TJ Schier and Lisa Schweickert up on the stage. They were speaking with such ease and confidence, and they were the very definition of “visible” – standing in the spotlight with all eyes on them. I thought to myself, “There is no way I could ever do that. No effing way.” I considered it more likely that I would grow a second head or learn to breathe underwater than to lead an organization and address hundreds of my peers. The idea was so terrifying that I didn’t even allow myself to imagine it.

Finding connection

Still, there was something about CHART that stood out right away. Even as I sat on the sidelines, I could sense that people weren’t just there for the session content; they were there for each other, and they really wanted to connect. They were sharing not only what worked in their companies and in their roles as trainers, but also what they struggled with, and they did it with a spirit of generosity and support. The organizers had even scheduled a power walk at 6:30am one morning for people to “see the beauty of Seattle” and have more time to spend together. That’s how important it was to them.

I skipped the 6:30am power walk (because I’m not insane), but in something of the luckiest break that could ever happen to me, I ended up at a table at a regional breakfast sitting next to another member from Seattle named Claudia Carr. She was my very first, and remains my most important, CHART connection – if you had to pick an allegorical hammer that shattered my teeny tiny comfort zone, it was Claudia. She welcomed me, got to know me, and made me feel like I belonged in a room where I was convinced I didn’t. Claudia introduced me to the others at the table, including Nancy Loizeaux from Seattle’s Best Coffee, went through the day’s agenda with me, and answered every question I had. Looking back, I can honestly say she changed the entire course of my CHART journey, because without her, I would have sneaked out at lunchtime and never returned. It was her warmth and kindness that made me want to seek out more of the same, and by the time that first conference ended (even though a lot of it was a blur), I knew I had to find a way to come back.

It took a year and half, but I eventually paid my own way to Boca Raton in the summer of 2003, and it was there I introduced myself to members such as Craig, Monique, and Andrew, and I started having conversations about budgets and duties and operations and salaries with other hospitality trainers. I kept making strides, going to more conferences, and met people like Curt, Katie, and John. Later came Michele, Jason, and Gabe. All these conversations were awkward for me at first, but they reminded me that I didn’t have to stay hidden, that I could be part of something bigger, and that others were interested in my perspective.

Opening the door to leadership

CHART kept presenting me with opportunities to move forward, and little by little, I found myself saying yes. My first real step into leadership came when I served as Regional Training Forum Director for the Northwest from 2006 to 2011. For five years, I helped organize gatherings where trainers could come together outside of the national conferences. These weren’t grand events, but I believe they mattered. They gave people in our region a chance to connect, to share ideas, and to build the kind of community I had discovered at my first conference. For me, it was the beginning of realizing that I could contribute in a more visible way.

From there, I began to volunteer for conference teams, and I was eventually asked to take on the role of Conference Director in San Francisco in 2010. Suddenly I was coordinating dozens of details, managing schedules, and making sure that all the moving parts of a CHART conference came together smoothly. It was daunting at first, but it was also exhilarating. I learned quickly that leadership wasn’t about doing everything myself but about relying on others, trusting the team around me, and creating an environment where everyone could succeed. Each time I took on more, I discovered that I could handle more, and that realization was as strengthening as any training I’d ever taken.

After serving as Conference Director, I ran for a seat on the Executive Board, where I served for two years. Then, in 2013, I decided to run for the CHART presidency. I wasn’t as nervous as I had once been, but I still wondered if I could do it, and more importantly, if the membership believed I could do it. The election was held during the conference, and I’ll never forget the moment Calvin, who was serving as President-Elect at the time, found me in the hallway between sessions and quietly told me that I had won. The results wouldn’t officially be announced until the banquet that evening, and I was supposed to keep it a secret until then. I thanked him and walked away. Then I ducked into the only quiet place I could find (the men’s bathroom), shut the door, and burst into tears. It was a flood of disbelief and gratitude all at once, and in that moment, it felt as if the pieces of my story had finally come back together to complete a picture I couldn't have even imagined when I first walked into that Seattle conference. The person who once worked so hard to blend into the background had just been chosen to lead, and I was going to stand in the very place where I had once watched TJ and Lisa a decade earlier and thought, ‘No effing way.’

Taking CHART home

Serving as President was a milestone, but perhaps the greater impact of CHART was how its lessons followed me back to my own workplace and changed the way I approached my role as a trainer and a leader.

One of the most important shifts was learning to use my voice. For much of my early career, I was afraid to share my opinions, and on the rare occasions when I did, I made sure they lined up neatly with the majority view. I thought that blending in would keep me safe, but really it just kept me invisible.

Through CHART, however, I learned something different. I began to understand that leadership isn’t about echoing what everyone else is saying, but it’s about being willing to contribute honestly, even when your perspective doesn’t match the room. That realization carried over into my job, where I became more willing to disagree when it mattered. My old boss used to say, “I get my way 50% of the time, so you should expect less.” It was his way of lowering my expectations, but over time I realized my role wasn’t to sit back quietly and accept whatever came my way. I needed to speak up and fight for what I believed in, even if it meant disagreeing with those above me.

Another lesson CHART taught me was just how much I could take on. I learned that I wasn’t limited to being “just” a trainer. I could stretch further and step into recruiting (which I took on officially at Ivar’s in 2008), as well as eventually tackling pieces of HR, IT, and Marketing. Each time more responsibility came my way, I discovered I could manage it, and I had CHART to thank for giving me the confidence to try.

That shift made me not only more effective at work but also more authentic. It helped me have harder conversations, carry greater responsibility, and lead with more clarity. In many ways, CHART gave me the confidence to be myself in settings where I once would have chosen silence.

The gold in the cracks

That is why the Kintsugi workshop struck me so deeply. As I pieced my bowl back together and painted the cracks with gold, I saw my own CHART journey reflected back at me. The breaks were my fears, my doubts, and my reluctance to step into the light. The repairs were the relationships I had built and the mentors who encouraged me. And the gold that now traced those cracks was the resilience and confidence I had gained, not in spite of those breaks, but because of them.

After 23 years, CHART is so much more than an association to me. It is a community that has shaped me, challenged me, and transformed me. It took someone who once wanted nothing more than to blend into the background and gave me the courage to stand on a stage, lead, and help others shine.

For anyone new to CHART, I would say this: let it change you. You may come here looking for solutions, resources, or ideas to take back to your company, and you will find all of that. But if you open yourself to it, you’ll also find something more valuable. You’ll find a community that will challenge you, encourage you, and believe in you until you believe in yourself. You’ll find the courage to step forward, to speak up, and to grow in ways you never thought possible. And just like the bowl I carried out of that workshop, your story can carry those cracks as shining seams of strength.