Men of Quality with Chris Moccia

While I publish this piece, I’m thinking about the power of one person’s voice and the ripple effect it has through social media. If it wasn’t for Cheryl Wilson Griffin suggesting I start following Erin Gallagher , I probably would never have met Chris Moccia .?

A few weeks ago, Erin made?the now infamous call?to #hypewomen, which inspired Chris to?do exactly that. Noting that Chris “understood the assignment,” it was Erin’s?re-post?that inspired me to introduce myself and ask him to share his story with me.?

If you don’t know Chris already, you’re welcome. He’s awesome. And I'm grateful to have met him. I hope you enjoy reading this as much as I enjoyed putting it together with him. #MenOfQuality

Chris Moccia is a Food & Beverage Sales Director who has 15 years experience in the premium, specialty food space. He equates restaurants as being on the same level of human achievement as music and theatre. Chris enjoys time with books, friends and family and seeks to uplift just about everyone in his orbit.?He loves cats, pizza, and Porsches.

Who is one mentor that has impacted you over your career?

My cousin Heather Groetsch has been my mentor since we met. Although we are the same age, Heather has always been someone I've looked up to. As summer roommates in college, she influenced me to give up my landscaping job and return to restaurant work. She'd count out hundreds of dollars on our couch after each shift. I'd return from my day beat down, and dirty, having earned less than $100 for 8 hours. Mystified one day, I said, "Wow, I'm in the wrong business." She told me I could change that and got me an interview to wait tables at the same slamming busy restaurant where she worked on Lake Minnetonka. I never looked back. I still work with restaurants today in Food Service Sales, so I'd say she's had a pretty big influence on that!

When we were in our late 20s, her brother Jon became quite ill quite suddenly, and we soon learned that his entire body was riddled with cancer. He was 24. Heather resigned from her job at a promising Startup tech company and moved Jon into her home and cared for him 24/7, ultimately providing hospice care for him until he left us. To this day, Jon remains one of the sweetest people I've ever met. Watching his struggle was one of the most painful experiences of my life. Looking at it twenty years later, I realize I learned so much from Heather about love. She performed it for Jon and it is one of the most beautiful experiences I've ever witnessed.

What was the main takeaway or lesson you learned?

I watched Heather grieve the loss of her brother and simultaneously jump back into tech sales. Her career growth has been meteoric. She's risen to become one of the top Sales Executives at SAP Concur for many years in a row, now with multiple Fortune 100 & 500 clients in her portfolio. I've never met anyone who works the number of hours she does and yet somehow still makes time to not just maintain, but to truly nurture and deepen her relationships with friends and family. She has a sense of humor like no other. I am busting a gut in her presence on the regular. All that said, she's an absolutely kind and humble woman. She's also a badass warrior. Whatever type of battle is at hand I have been and will continue to be right there with her backing her up. Heather had her own very difficult battle with cancer. It was stage 3 ovarian and everyone who knows her would have broken if she had died. We'd have broken beyond repair. She fought with the determination of a starving tiger hunting for food and ended up beating it - while, get this - still doing her job! So the lesson she imparted to me is one of boundless courage and tenacity. She is driven by her faith, a huge heart, and a very robust sense of humor. Heather never gives up and lives her truth out loud in a very authentic way.

How do you implement that knowledge in your career?

My business is food and beverage. Like many industries, F&B is all about relationships. It's ultimately about the coming together of family, friends, and guests of all kinds. On the business side, it's about listening to customers, understanding their needs, and providing solutions to make their work easier. For the brands in my portfolio, it's about adding authenticity, providing best-in-class quality, and ultimately elevating the dining experience.

My experiences with Heather over the years have helped make me become a better communicator, a stronger negotiator, and a more compassionate person. Her impact runs through my life and career like a freight train.

She taught me that taking chances and overcoming setbacks are integral parts of our journey toward success. I’ve learned how to be more open and vulnerable; how to trust my heart and gut as much as my brain. Heather has helped me develop the mindset to be OK with negative outcomes. My key takeaways are: constantly honing my craft, leaning into and learning from my mistakes and never giving up on my truth, both in business and in life. I recently started my own consulting business and without a doubt, much of the courage to take that risk comes from the good fortune of being blessed to have Heather in my life.

Why is creating these kinds of spaces and relationships important to you?

People need to be more open in my opinion. We need to embrace everything together (good and bad) and help uplift one another. I think that's how we keep growing. Part of that is the willingness to be compassionate toward one another which demands being open to vulnerability. We have to be open and willing to run the risk of being hurt, shamed, or humiliated. We have to be resilient to the negatives. The doubts and fears...all those things that lurk in the dark. We have to fight, but also remain kind - and it doesn't hurt to make people laugh while doing it. We're all part of the human tribe and we are all valuable and deserve to be here. We deserve to take up space. I think in general men oftentimes take this for granted while women have to fight harder to occupy the same amount of space. There is a shift taking place toward parity. Much of the time progress feels slow, but sometimes the shifts are tectonic! IE: Jamie Lee Curtis' reaction to Michelle Yeoh's Golden Globe win igniting Erin Gallagher to start the #hypewomen movement.

What do you think prevents men from opening up or stepping into those spaces?

Fear of judgment. Fear of being vulnerable. Fear of our X chromosome essentially. To be blunt, men need to loosen up. For me, a change began with a deep dive into the cognitive dissonance of judging myself and others based on old gender norms. The stress and burden of carrying internal and external judgment were crushing me. It felt so nice when I finally?understood these old judgments didn't even belong to me!?

Harry Styles sometimes wears blouses and pearls for reasons beyond simply getting attention. I believe he's doing these things because he's not afraid to embrace the feminine. It also seems like he wants to help with representation. Ditto, Bob the Drag Queen. No, not ditto - Bob is next level. The world is beautiful because of its variance, not its homogeneity. This does not mean men need to wear pearls or be drag queens. It just means those kinds of things shouldn't bother anyone when men do. We should all have the?right to live in our?gender?identities in?whatever way makes?us feel most comfortable. I think more and more men are exploring their feelings and emotions and I believe there is hope for a kinder, gentler future. But it's going to take a village.

What is one small thing you think anyone could do to create more equitable and diverse spaces?

I have zero credentials in the fields of science or psychology. That said, I was a boy raised to be a man in the existing paradigm. I was raised to?not have?EQ. From my earliest?childhood, I was raised to "Grow up" and not be a "Crybaby." In retrospect, I?was a child raised to "Be a man" with little left to safely express apart from the polarities of happiness and anger. Thankfully, I've become introspective lately working on myself and connecting more with my heart and spirit. The results have been freeing and profound. It's wonderful to be my authentic?self and to speak my truth.

I wish I had been raised with a full palette of emotions without fear of judgment or reprisal. Emotions including; tenderness, gentleness, joy, empathy, sadness, and vulnerability. Being raised with?abundant?EQ would have helped me effortlessly grow up to be a calmer, less aggressive, and more caring man. I would argue that the outdated model of rearing I grew up?in is a main ingredient in the recipe for toxic masculinity. Being forced to bottle up all of these suppressed emotions until they implode, or explode in various forms of anger, rage, and violence is not sustainable for anyone. So I think the one thing we can do is to be more thoughtful in the way we raise boys. With critical mass, this could positively impact the way men interact and relate to those around them, which in my estimation, will help make the world a kinder, more equitable place.

Men of Quality is an interview series about sharing stories and positive experiences to answer this question: How can we work together to create a more equitable and diverse professional world?

If you're interested in sharing your story, I'm here for it.