A view from the top with Pizza Hut managing director Regina Borda
The Swiss-born, American-educated entrepreneur tells Andy Martin how she makes Pizza Hut international, while keeping the company's American roots
If ever there was a truly international food it’s pizza. So it seems appropriate that Pizza Hut should have the very international, globetrotting Regina Borda fronting its operation as managing director for Europe and Canada. She looks like a UN ambassador who happens to be wearing a T-shirt emblazoned with the slogan, For the Love of Pizza. “It’s a magical food,” she says at her base in Holborn. “An opportunity to share.” They ought to parachute her into major conflict zones bearing pizza boxes.
Now 45, she was born near Bern in Switzerland to a German father and French mother and had to learn three languages straight off the bat (French, German, Italian). Now she speaks five fluently and can fake it in one or two more. I can certify that her English is perfect. “In Switzerland if you drive 10 minutes in any direction you find people are speaking a different language. So you have to adapt. Otherwise you run out of people to speak to.”
After studying “cultural anthropology” at the University of Fribourg, Borda did her MBA in Miami, where she met her Colombian husband. “In Colombia they use different hands for the knife and fork. There is no right way. The advantage of pizza is it’s easier to use your hands. Roll up your sleeves and dig in.”
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