This interview with Lindsey Ueberroth, chief executive of the Preferred Hotel Group, was conducted and condensed by Adam Bryant.
Q. Were you in leadership roles when you were younger?
A. Most people don’t believe me, but when I was a child, I was a painfully shy person. But my family moved from Los Angeles to Minneapolis when I was in fifth grade and that was a big turning point, because all of a sudden I was in a new environment. And it was really cool to be from California, so I had that going for me.
We ended up moving a lot, and I became very good at being the new kid and learned very quickly that you have to get involved in things. I ended up in a lot of leadership positions.
Tell me about college.
I studied organizational communications. I was always interested in what motivates people, and how to affect people’s behavior. I interviewed for everything when I graduated, but I ended up working for Accenture. That was an interesting interview process, because it was a highly coveted company and everybody had said: “You’ve got to have this G.P.A. You have to have scored this on your SAT.”
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