We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Christina Vogel a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Christina, thanks so much for taking the time to share your insights and lessons with us today. We’re particularly interested in hearing about how you became such a resilient person. Where do you get your resilience from?
When I was six weeks old and my brother, Scot, was 15 months, my mom packed us up. She took us to my grandparents’ farm in rural Illinois while my dad was at work. She never came back. We moved in with my grandparents for several years and I was close to my grandparents for the rest of their lives. My grandfather volunteered for World War 2 and my grandmother found ways to subvert the gender norms of her day. For example, as a young woman in the 1940s she worked for the State of Illinois. I believe my resilience comes from being around my grandparents. When you live on a farm you must figure out how to solve numerous problems every single day.
As a result, I do not accept the status quo. I grew up in a working-class household where we often received a box of food from the local food bank and yet I always knew I would go to college, and I also always knew I would have to pay for it myself. I started walking beans when I was ten and was excited to start detasseling when I was 13. When I was 15, I started working at the local Dairy Queen and often rode my bike into work from our house in the country. By the time I was a senior in high school, I had taken care of a local elderly woman with dementia, filed paperwork and cleaned for a local doctor, babysat for numerous families (including multiple nights a week for two kids while their parents worked second jobs), ran the concession stand at the local public pool, and worked at the local pizza place. All the while, I also ran track and cross country and participated in numerous other activities including plays and musicals, academic competitions, I was the mascot for our school sports teams and was in the flag corps for marching band and yet I graduated in the top ten percent of my class.
When I finally got to college, where I moved myself into the dorm by myself, that didn’t change. I graduated in four years, working full time at a local pizza place while also having a work study job, and having an internship most years. In addition, I joined the soccer team having never played soccer before. I played soccer for three years at a division 3 college and lettered. I was also a member of Kappa Delta sorority where I was elected to the Standards Board for three years and was the chaplain.
After college I worked at an insurance company and the Chief Technology Officer chose me, out of the entire company, to teach computer programming to. When I decided to go to graduate school at the University of Illinois to pursue an MBA and a master’s degree in journalism, I used that programming skill to work at the US Army Corps of Engineers to help develop a national analysis tool that allocated tax dollars more efficiently. I worked full time throughout graduate school, but graduated on time and also started the Women in Business Society in the MBA program, was the administrator of the Department of Journalism’s website, worked as a communications intern, served on the Board of the Illini Media Company and was asked to lead three consulting projects by my peers for the Office of Strategic Business Initiatives (OSBI) having never been on a project as a regular contributor. Only 10% of the OSBI projects finished on time. All three of my projects were completed on time. I believe the reason my projects completed on time is because for each project I assigned myself a regular role withing the project while also leading it. That meant I knew intimately who was doing the work and who wasn’t and where the potential problems were so I could fix them before they became unfixable.
However, before my final year in graduate school my father got divorced from his second wife, who was embezzling money from his company, and he fell into a depression. So, the entire last year I also drove forty-five minutes to my father’s house three times a week where I would buy his groceries, make dinner, and then complete his business activities. I would create bids, write out materials lists, file quarterly taxes, pay bills, etc. I would mail everything on my way out of town going back to graduate school. In April of my senior year, just a couple of weeks before my graduation, my father was hospitalized in the psych ward for five days. My aunt and I had to have him committed and it took us 14 hours in one day to get him into the hospital. Then in my mid-twenties, I had power of attorney and power of attorney for health care for my father, which I still have more than twenty years later.
After graduate school I was one of two people selected throughout the United States for a Dow Jones News Wires internship in Jersey City, NJ where I wrote business and financial stories. The headlines of my articles were broadcast across the New York Stock Exchange. It was the coolest job I ever had, but I hated every minute I lived there. Having grown up in a rural environment surrounded by cornfields I could never get used to the big city and its crowds and noise. Plus, my dad’s health was constantly on my mind. He relapsed that fall and I’m glad I was home to take care of everything. For the next five years I still traveled at least once a week to see my dad and help him regain his ability to take care of himself.
I worked for the State of Illinois in the Office of Management and Budget and then worked for nine years at Country Financial as a computer programmer doing data analysis. During that time, my boyfriend of nine years and I got married (we remain married today) and had three children.
In 2013, we moved to Erie, PA when my husband accepted a position at Erie Insurance. I came to Erie determined to make a home for my family even though we didn’t know a single person. I became the treasurer of the elementary school PTO for four years; I was the treasurer of my HOA for even longer and became a Girl Scout Troop leader.
Then in 2015, I decided to open my own business. I am a business and financial nerd, so opening my own business was something I had always wanted to do. I ultimately decided to open a pizza place, as I had worked for a regional chain in Illinois for ten years between high school, undergrad and graduate school. In 2016, I opened my first Donatos Pizza franchise and became the first and only solo woman franchisee for Donatos Pizza and I have the only stores in Pennsylvania.
It was difficult to get the financing for the first location as bankers, particularly women bankers, were highly dismissive of me. But drawing on all my background and experience of shifting to overcome a problem I didn’t give up. I signed the lease for the second location in December of 2019, right before the pandemic. That store encountered numerous problems, but I got it open eventually, and it stayed open for the entire five-year lease. In 2022, I opened another Donatos location which also encountered numerous issues with its build out, but I got it open. In the past nine years I’ve paid out over $4 million in wages that have been used to buy houses and cars and fund college careers at all our local institutions of higher education. I pay significantly higher wages than my industry, offer benefits including reimbursing my mangers 100% of their health insurance, I offer paid time off and a retirement plan with a company match. I value my employees and in return my average tenure is over 40 months, which is unheard of in the food service industry. I also created a Pizza with a Purpose fundraising program where I’ve given back over $96,000 to local organizations including travel basketball teams, and church day cares, and robotics clubs and dozens of others.
Meanwhile, in 2020, I applied through the paper to be on the board of the Erie County Community College. The Pennsylvania Department of Education had approved the college, the first in PA in 27 years, in the summer of 2020. I was selected as an inaugural board member and still serve on the board today. We were given one year to stand up the college and were required to start classes in August 2021. We spent an untold number of hours working to create programs, hire staff, write policies and find a location and classes started on time. Two years ago, we graduated 27 students in the first class. Last year we graduated over 80 and this year we will graduate over 100. The Erie County Community College has changed and will change the trajectory for many within Erie County and I couldn’t be prouder of what we’ve accomplished.
About six weeks ago I decided to run for County Executive of Erie County. It is my first time running for public office. I wanted to take all my experiences and education and make a difference in my adopted hometown. If resilience is the ability to adapt and overcome challenging life experiences, then I think resilient describes me better than anything else and I owe it all to my grandparents and the example they provided for me.
Great, so let’s take a few minutes and cover your story. What should folks know about you and what you do?
I am running for Erie County Executive, and it is my first time running for office. The current county executive has modeled himself after Donald Trump and has created a very divisive and corrosive community. I am running to change that. I want to bring fiscal responsibility and accountability into the County Executive’s office and make the county better for everyone that lives here. The County’s role is about people. Over 65% of the budget is money that comes from state and federal programs to be used for specific purposes to improve the lives of the residents of Erie County and that is what I will focus on. You can learn more about me and my goals at https://www.voteforvogel.org.
There is so much advice out there about all the different skills and qualities folks need to develop in order to succeed in today’s highly competitive environment and often it can feel overwhelming. So, if we had to break it down to just the three that matter most, which three skills or qualities would you focus on?
I think the three qualities that were important to my life were being open to taking a chance no matter what it was, putting in the work, and never giving up. My mantra is always – one foot in front of the other. Just keep moving forward and don’t let other people distract you from what your goal is.
Is there a particular challenge you are currently facing?
I will say the one particular challenge I am facing is how divisive the country has become. I don’t understand how we were able to lose sight of our humanity and accountability toward each other. Any time that I’ve been stranded alone on the side of the road throughout my life no one has ever asked me my political affiliation and I’ve never asked anyone theirs and yet the vitriol that I read would lead you to believe that one side or the other are monsters. I think social media and the fractalization of news and media has contributed to this but also the reduction of civic and community engagement.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.voteforvogel.org/
- Instagram: vote_for_vogel
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/voteforchristinavogel
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