Each week tens of thousands of diners eat at an Olive Garden or Red Lobster
restaurant. Few of these diners know that the CEO heading these large
restaurant chains is a black man.
Clarence Otis Jr. Is the CEO of Darden Restaurants Inc., the largest casual
dining operator in the nation. The firm operates nearly 1,400 company-owned
restaurants coast to coast serving 300 million meals annually. Darden
employs 150,000 workers and has annual revenues of $6 billion.
Born in Vicksburg, Mississippi, Otis moved to Los Angeles when he was 6
years old. His father was a high school dropout who worked as a janitor. The
family lived in Watts at the time of the 1965 riots. In the post-Watts
period, Otis recalls being stopped and questioned by police several times a
year because of the color of his skin.
A high school guidance counselor recommended him for a scholarship at
Williams College, The highly selective liberal arts institution in
Massachusetts. Otis graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Williams and went on to
earn a law degree at Stanford.   Otis landed on Wall Street as a merger and
acquisitions attorney for J.P. Morgan Securities. He joined Darden
Restaurants in 1995 as corporate treasurer. He became CEO in 2004.

While CEO of Darden Restaurants in 2008, Clarence Otis Jr. earned a total compensation of $5,250,649, which included a base salary of $889,135, a cash bonus of $972,500, stocks granted of $1,183,900, and options granted of $1,870,463.^[1]

How many of us-or anyone else-knew this?!
(But we heard all about Michael Vick, didn’t we?)
Things have got to change.

[via email forward and wikipedia]