Clarence Otis Jr.

Clarence Otis Jr. was born on 11 April 1956 in Vicksburg, Mississippi. His father, Clarence Otis Sr., worked as a janitor, and his mother, Calanthus Hall Otis, stayed home to raise their three children. The family later moved to Los Angeles, where he has recalled being taken on Sunday drives through Beverly Hills.

Otis graduated from Williams College with an economics degree in 1977, then studied law at Stanford Law School. After about four years as a Wall Street attorney he moved to the securities firm Kidder, Peabody, and in 1987 became a vice president in public finance at First Boston. He later co-founded a municipal securities business and headed the public finance unit at Chemical Securities.

In 1995 Darden Restaurants, the parent company of Red Lobster and Olive Garden, recruited him as treasurer. He had almost no restaurant experience beyond a stint as a college waiter, but he rose quickly, becoming chief financial officer in 1999 and, in 2002, president of the Smokey Bones chain, which grew from 30 to 80 restaurants under his leadership.

In 2004 Otis became Darden's chief executive, its first African American CEO, and he was one of only seven Black chief executives of a Fortune 500 company that year. He became chairman in 2005. Under his leadership Darden bought chains including LongHorn Steakhouse and The Capital Grille, its profits rose, its stock price roughly doubled, and it appeared on Fortune's list of the best companies to work for four years in a row.

Otis retired in 2014 after a decade as chief executive, a period that ended with the sale of Red Lobster and criticism over layoffs. He received the Horatio Alger Award in 2007 and has long spoken about the importance of role models for Black professionals, noting that the biggest challenge in his own career was not seeing people like himself at senior levels.