The starring role Laura Olguín now fills is somewhat different from the one she imagined a couple of decades ago.
She wanted to be an actress. In fact, she wanted an Oscar. But instead, she ended up leaving California to lead a cast of 600 Tucson fast-food workers. ‘Most people really like working for me. It’s the key to my success,’ she said.
Born in Mexico City in 1964, Olguín went to high school in El Paso, the city where her mother was born, and knew that Hollywood was the place to pursue Oscar dreams. Enrolling at Cal State-Long Beach to pursue her dramatic ambitions, she took a job at a Jack in the Box near campus.
It was the usual gig, cooking burgers and fries, taking orders, cleaning up. She excelled at it and rose through the ranks to become manager at age 19. At the same time, she began to realize that winding up on the silver screen required lots of luck, talent and money. Deciding she was short on all three, she gave up the acting dream, switching her major to psychology.
As her acting dream faded, her career with the fast-food company soared. She eventually landed in the company’s corporate office in San Diego and headed its since-abandoned international franchising effort. Along the way, she earned a degree in psychology at Cal State and an MBA at Pepperdine University.
She thrived at Jack in the Box but was recruited away in 1995, 1st by Taco Bell, then by a Fortune 500 company that provided inventory services to businesses coast to coast. That job required a lot of travel for 3 years, which challenged her time with two small children. Around that time, longtime Tucson franchise operator Claire Thomas called her to see if Olguín would be interested in buying into CRT Partners, which operates Jack in the Box in Southern Arizona. Read More.
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