从女招待到女总裁

    如果卡特•科尔坚持自己青少年时的梦想，这位35岁的Cinnabon总裁如今会是杜邦公司（DuPont）的一名律师。

    不是所有十几岁的孩子都会渴望自己的职业是在一家化工企业担任律师，但这样的抱负却让17岁的科尔在猫头鹰餐厅（Hooters）找到一份女服务生的工作，以便攒钱上大学。那份工作是科尔进入餐饮服务行业的介绍信，同时也是她迈向Cinnamon总裁宝座的第一步。

    18岁那年，科尔已经成熟到可以成为猫头鹰餐厅的服务员，她当时就读于北佛罗里达大学（University of North Florida）的工程技术专业。科尔是家族中第一个大学生。

    科尔在猫头鹰餐厅赢得了一项声誉，即作为雇员，她愿意挽起袖子去干别人不愿意干的活。因此，猫头鹰餐厅总部致电她的经理物色帮助开辟澳大利亚市场的人手时，科尔的名字自然而然地浮现出来。她当时19岁，从未坐过飞机，而且只离开过佛罗里达州杰克逊维尔的老家一次。当晚，科尔第一次乘飞机前往迈阿密办理护照。

    科尔在悉尼呆了40天。在回家的航班上，她阅读了自己能够找到的所有主要商业杂志。科尔说：“那一刻，很多事情混杂在一起，最终改变了我未来的人生道路。”她回来之后还不到一个月，猫头鹰餐厅又指派她到中美洲去完成同样的任务。

    因为去了好几个全球市场，科尔大学毕不了业，于是她决定退学（她坦承，如果总不去上课，考试就很难过关）。从大学退学终结了她就读法学院和去杜邦公司工作的梦想，但同时却为她打开了一扇新的大门。紧接着，猫头鹰餐厅就提拔科尔负责所有员工的培训。那时候，她年纪太小，甚至不能租车。这个问题很麻烦，因为她总是在路上。23岁那年，科尔已经是猫头鹰餐厅员工和全球管理人员培训的负责人了。

    “我很幸运，猫头鹰餐厅并不是一家复杂的公司，否则像我这个年纪的人不可能拥有那么多的机会，”她说。“没有那么多从常青藤名校毕业的大学生争先恐后地来猫头鹰餐厅找一份管理岗位的工作。”

    猫头鹰餐厅给予科尔一种她无法在其他地方获得的教育。她供职猫头鹰餐厅期间，这家公司还购买、运营过一家航空公司（猫头鹰航空公司），推出了信用卡业务（猫头鹰万事达卡），还拥有过自己的商品和食品生产业务。公司管理层跟创始人发生了争斗，在此期间，猫头鹰餐厅首席执行官兼总裁兼董事长罗伯特•布鲁克斯突然去世。随后，人们又对他财产的价值发生了争执。科尔说：“我目睹了其他人一生都没有机会目睹的事情。”

    而此时，科尔已经知道自己想要经营一家公司，但她不认为那将会是猫头鹰餐厅。她需要外部视角以及学习商业语言的机会。尽管科尔从未获得本科学位，但她成功被乔治亚州立大学的工商管理硕士培训计划录取。

    If Kat Cole had stuck to her teenage dreams, the 35-year-old Cinnabon president would today be an attorney at DuPont.

    It takes a certain kind of teenager to aspire for a career as a corporate lawyer at a chemical company, but that ambition led Cole at age 17 to get a job at Hooters as a hostess to save up for college. It was her introduction to the food service industry and also the first step toward becoming the head honcho at Cinnabon.

    At 18, Cole was old enough to become a Hooters waitress and was studying at the University of North Florida as an engineering major . She was the first person in her family to enroll in college.

    Cole gained a reputation at Hooters as an employee willing to roll up her sleeves and take the jobs that no one else wanted. When Hooters corporate called her manager looking for servers to help open the Australian market, Cole's name came up. She was 19, had never been on a plane before, and had only once been outside of her hometown of Jacksonville, Fla. She took her first-ever flight that night to Miami to get a passport.

    Cole spent 40 days in Sydney, and on the flight home read every major business magazine she could get her hands on. "A lot of things came together in that moment to change who I was going to become," she says. When she got back, not even a month passed before Hooters asked her to do the same thing in Central America.

    Several global markets later, Cole was failing college, and she decided to drop out. (It's hard to pass your classes if you're never there, she admits.) Leaving the university ended her pursuit of law school and a job at DuPont, but it opened up new doors for her. Almost immediately Hooters promoted her to oversee all employee training. She wasn't even old enough to rent a car, which was problematic since she was always on the road. By 23 she was overseeing employee and global management training.

    "I was lucky that Hooters wasn't a more sophisticated company, because there's no way someone my age would have had those chances," she says. "It wasn't like people graduating from Ivy League schools were dying to get a corporate job at Hooters."

    Hooters gave Cole the kind of education she wouldn't have been able to get anywhere else. While she was there, the company bought and ran an airline (Hooters Air), had a credit card operation (Hooters Mastercard), and owned its own merchandise and food production businesses. Management was fighting with the company's founders, and, in the middle of it all, Hooters CEO, president, and chairman Robert Brooks died suddenly. A battle ensued over the value of his estate. "I got exposed to things that people don't get exposed in a lifetime," she says.

    At this point Cole knew that she wanted to run a company, but she didn't think it was going to be Hooters. She needed outside perspective and the chance to learn the language of business. Despite never receiving an undergraduate degree, she was accepted to Georgia State's MBA program.