Lissa Druss delivers powerful personal narrative at Women in Leadership event
By Terrance Thornton | Digital Free Press
There is a lot of fight in Lissa Druss.
Elected leaders, Scottsdale proprietors and local movers and shakers came to Hilton Scottsdale Resort & Villas last Thursday to hear Ms. Druss deliver the keynote address at the latest installment of the Women in Leadership series.
The Women in Leadership series is presented by the Scottsdale Area Chamber of Commerce whereas Stephanie Miller, director of programs and events, serves as master of ceremonies.
Ms. Druss is a former broadcast journalist, expert crisis communicator who owns her own communications firm — and governmental relations director at Riot Hospitality.
“I cannot tell you what an honor it is to be here today,” Ms. Druss said to the few hundred souls who came to the Hilton Scottsdale Resort & Villas to hear her speak. “I appreciate everyone at the chamber — it is an incredibly relationship, we just love it so much. I am very happy to be at Riot Hospitality.”
Ms. Druss offered to the crowd a rundown of the restaurant and nightlight properties owned and operated at Scottsdale-based Riot Hospitality, which now counts 14 brick-and-mortar locations in Arizona, Colorado, Tennessee and a 15th location planned in Scottsdale later this year.
But before the meteoric success unfolding at Riot Hospitality, Ms. Druss was a broadcast journalist.
“You have your own personal brand,” she said to those in attendance pointing out she learned this lesson early on when a college professor tried to tell her what she could and what she couldn’t do.” She related that “being Italian” made her all the more obstinate when he told her she was never going to make it. She resolved: “I am going to go do it!’”
She did it, but not before fighting her way through the broadcast television door during a time when cable news was state-of-the-art technology and the local news report was watched by millions every night in major municipalities across the nation.
In all Ms. Druss, who attended the University of Arizona, spent 13 years with CBS Television in Chicago and Los Angeles even evolving into an executive producer credited with launching the Comcast SportsNet network in Chicago, San Francisco, Boston, and New York.
In 2009 she won the Chicago Journalism Award in Sports.
Amid her television reporting career of the late-1990s and early 2000s she reported on historical events such as the Persian Gulf War, the Oklahoma City bombing, the O.J. Simpson murder trial, and the Chicago Bulls championships.
“Ultimately, I covered three Super Bowls, after-game interviews with Michael Jordan — a blessed career, I won nine Emmy’s,” Ms. Druss said pointing out her career accolades came from hard work and determination despite the challenges she faced.
“Hard work does pay off.”
But the opportunity to thrive in one of the most competitive businesses on planet Earth did not come without perseverance and loss.
“You can talk with the blonde producer for that, she wears a mattress on her back,” she recalled of one of the derogatory comments relayed to her from a colleague in the 1990s American television newsroom. “Still to this day, I remember when and where I was when someone told me that, he was my friend — that’s why I worked so hard.”
Undeterred, Ms. Druss carried on winning awards and delivering top-notch reports every night first in Chicago then later in Los Angeles where she met colleague Harvey Levin, founder of TMZ; and Lester Holt of NBC News Nightly News.
But one day, while working as a producer, hosts she considered colleagues again chose to use derogatory, sexist comments in their description of her and her work.
“When you look up the word, ‘bitch,’ you can find a picture of Lissa … you can have her, everyone else has,” she said of what she heard that while preparing for a televised broadcast. “At this point, I am a working mother who was just slandered on air. I became a subject of several news stories. I was even the subject of a Wikipedia page.”
Lissa Druss: A reinvention of a woman in leadership
In 2010, she left broadcast journalism for good.
“I took my 13 years of stories I had told and I used that success and I started working in crisis communication,” she said. “I started working for Thom Serafin of Serafin & Associates in Chicago.”
She spent a total of eight years in crisis communications at Serafin & Associates before founding her own company, Strategia Consulting.
“I am a skilled crisis communicator. If you don’t manage your message someone will manage it for you,” she said. “A skilled communicator can spin any story — and it is spin — to protect the brand.”
During her time running Strategia she encountered Riot Hospitality founder Ryan Hibbert and, as they say, the rest is history.
“I quickly formed an inseparable bond with Ryan, our chief counsel and Ryan’s partner,” she said. “The culture of Riot Hospitality is what makes us different.”
In 2018, she received one of the highest honors from the Italian government: induction as a Cavaliere dell’ Ordine della Stella d’Italia, or Knight of the Order of the Star of Italy.
“I am also using my brand to help my Italian heritage,” she said of her role as a Cavaliere dell’ Ordine della Stella d’Italia. “What doesn’t kill you makes your stronger.”
