Colleen Keating

Chief Operating Officer, Americas | InterContinental Hotels Group (IHG)
Tuesday, October 15
1:00PM | Education Stage 

Colleen is responsible for leading the operations for more than 3,900 IHG® hotels across the region, further strengthening and cultivating relationships with owners, and overseeing franchisee performance support.

Colleen has more than 25 years of operational leadership experience. Prior to joining IHG in April 2018, she served as Executive Vice President of Operations for Davidson Hotels & Resorts in Atlanta, one of the largest privately held management companies in the lodging industry. In this role, she led all operations functions, including operations strategy and analytics, to deliver greater value to owners and investors under brands including Hilton, Hyatt, Westin, Marriott, Sheraton and Renaissance.

Prior to Davidson, Colleen spent 17 years at Starwood, where she led its franchise operations for North America, overseeing 264 full-service hotels across five brands. Colleen has held management and sales leadership roles in several hotels for Starwood Hotels, Omni Hotels, The Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company, and a franchise operator of Crowne Plaza® and Holiday Inn Express® hotels.

Jonathan Maze

Executive Editor | Restaurant Business Magazine
Wednesday, October 16
11:00AM | Education Stage 

Finding Your True North: How Independents Can Navigate Change in the Restaurant Industry 

The restaurant industry finds itself amid the most disruptive era in nearly 40 years as technological advancement and demographic change wreak havoc on everything we thought we knew about how to run a successful restaurant. While most national brands have started to adapt with the help of professional data and consulting firms, who is looking out for the independent restaurateur?  

Jonathan Maze to the rescue! Join Jonathan for a summary presentation of what all is changing in the industry and why while offering real solutions for how you can successfully navigate to a safe and profitable harbor.  

Maze is the executive editor of Restaurant Business Magazine and a well-known industry reporter and commentator. He is the host of Restaurant Business’s podcast, A Deeper Dive, and is the author of The Bottom Line blog. He has also been quoted in several newspapers and has been a guest on CNBC and NPR. Maze is an award-winning journalist who has studied the restaurant industry for the past 13 years. Before coming to Restaurant Business, he was the senior editor of Nation’s Restaurant News, and spent several years as the editor of the Restaurant Finance Monitor.