Susan Salgado

Her journey began in the early 1990s as a customer, not a consultant. As a young twenty-something from Pennsylvania, Susan and her husband regularly went on dates to the bar at Union Square Cafe (USC) in New York City. Over the course of several years, it had become their favorite because, despite being relative “nobodies” in a city full of “somebodies,” they were consistently treated with genuine warmth and made to feel that they truly belonged. The hospitality they experienced was striking—not just in its consistency, but in the genuine joy the staff showed while serving others.

In 1994, when the owner, Danny Meyer, opened a second restaurant, Gramercy Tavern, and then two more restaurants in 1998, he seemed to be able to replicate the same high standard of hospitality across each new restaurant. At that point, Susan was pursuing a Ph.D. in Organizational Behavior at NYU’s Stern School of Business, studying how people could be a source of competitive advantage for a company. She was determined that Danny had a secret formula for creating remarkable teams who would deliver outstanding results, and she wanted to understand it. So she convinced him to let her study his restaurants for her dissertation. Her research revealed the infrastructure that makes culture repeatable and scalable—a model she still uses today.

After earning her doctorate in 2003, Susan joined Union Square Hospitality Group (USHG) as their first-ever Director of Culture & Learning. Her critical mission in this role was to create a blueprint of USHG’s culture that would allow Danny to grow the company without losing the soul. Her culture and leadership development work proved essential as the company grew, including the scaling of the Shake Shack brand from a single hot dog cart to a global phenomenon.

USHG’s success also piqued the interest of business owners across industries who, like Susan, wondered how Danny did it. In 2010, in response to overwhelming demand, she co-founded USHG’s consulting arm, serving as Managing Partner. The business world took notice. The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Fast Company, and Business Insider have all featured her work. She co-founded the NYC Chapter of Conscious Capitalism, delivered a TEDx talk, contributed to Inc. magazine, and was named one of Fast Company’s 100 Most Creative People in Business.

Today, as an independent consultant based in New York City, Susan continues her mission to make the world a better place, one workplace at a time. She has worked across more than 20 different industries over the last 20 years, including brands such as Delta Air Lines, Hyatt Hotels, Merrill Lynch, CLEAR, Chanel, Yale Executive Leadership Program, Ford Motor Company, Cedars-Sinai Hospital System, and dozens more who discovered that hospitality principles could transform any workplace. She approaches each client engagement with the same conviction that first drew her to study Danny Meyer’s restaurants: when you get culture right, everything else follows.