SPEAKERS

As McDonald’s USA Senior Vice President and Chief Development Officer, Tabassum Zalotrawala leads the US Restaurant Development team, focused on accelerating the pace of McDonald’s restaurant openings, including the real estate, construction, facilities, architecture, and strategy/analytics teams. In this role, Tabassum oversees the expansion of McDonald’s in the US and manages the 13,000 US McDonald’s restaurant portfolio. Tabassum joined McDonald’s in 2023 after four and a half years as Chief Development Officer at Chipotle Mexican Grill where she led a holistic restaurant turnaround strategy and all aspects of real estate development for the US, Canada, and Europe. At Chipotle, she also oversaw the Center of Excellence for Design and Construction to ensure restaurants reflected the appropriate brand image and provided a convenient and welcoming customer experience. Prior to Chipotle, Tabassum served as Chief Development Officer for four years at Panda Restaurant Group where she championed a fundamental shift around innovation and development to drive growth for the organization.

Before joining Networld Media Group as Vice President of Events, Cherryh Cansler spent several years as VP of Editorial managing the Networld’s nine B2B publications. Throughout her 20-year career as a journalist, she’s written about a variety of topics, ranging from the restaurant industry and technology to health and fitness news. Her byline has appeared in a plethora of newspapers, magazines and websites, including Forbes, The Kansas City Star and American Fitness magazine. She also serves as the managing editor for FastCasual.com.