Joan Bottarini, '93, CFO of Hyatt Hotels, has received the 2024 Distinguished Alumna Award. (Photo by Anjali Pinto)

Joan Bottarini, ’93, still keeps in touch with the friends she made at NIU and has made connections with other NIU alumni in her capacity as chief financial officer of Hyatt Hotels.
 

Bottarini, who received a B.S. in accountancy, has been with Hyatt for more than 24 years and was named CFO in 2018.

For her success in business, Bottarini is receiving the 2024 Distinguished Alumna Award from the NIU Alumni Association.

Bottarini grew up in the northwestern suburbs of Chicago, and had an early love of numbers and, later, accounting.

"I’ve always had a passion for numbers and solving puzzles since I was little," she said. "One of my first jobs as a teenager in high school was working at the local bank encoding checks and processing the mail every day after class. During the summer breaks, I spent time working in an office for a CPA who owned a small local business. It was there that I fell in love with spreadsheets and the rest was history!"
 

Bottarini recalled how excellent the professors were in the accounting program, including Donald Kieso.

“I had the great fortune of having Don Kieso for my financial accounting class,” she said. “He literally wrote the book on financial accounting. I remember when I took the CPA exam, people from other schools were there and they took pride in the fact that they were walking around with their financial accounting books with Don Kieso on the cover.”

Bottarini said the College of Business’s job placement program helped her land an internship at KPMG, where she worked for five years after graduation. Following some time working for a real estate company on the West Coast, she was hired by Hyatt back in Chicago.

“I have consistently drawn upon the great foundation that NIU provided me, while I have navigated my career and my journey,” she said. “The hospitality business is about people and relationships. At Hyatt we are a purpose-driven company We care for people so they can be their best."
 

Bottarini talked about how taking risks has helped her grow in her career, notably her experience working as Hyatt’s vice president of hotel finance at the company’s Asia Pacific divisional office in Hong Kong. She lived and worked there for approximately two years.

“It was a very tough decision—my husband and two children and even my dog moved to Hong Kong,” she said. “I received great support from the colleagues there because they understood the magnitude of the decision professionally and personally working outside the U.S.”

She said that, at the time, she had been with the company for over 10 years and was confident that she had a lot to offer. However, the learning experience and cultural immersion was the one of the greatest growth opportunities and led her to appreciate the benefits of empathy and meeting others where they are. It was a humbling experience.

“The opportunity helped me understand how listening was so important and that working in the region, in different cultural environments, opened my eyes,” she said. ‘I really understood that I had to ask and not assume that I knew how to handle certain situations, and that really helped me understand implications of decisions. At Hyatt, we’re very focused on the inclusion of ideas and people—you never know where good ideas are going to come from. And, honestly, this inclusive approach and focus really leads to better outcomes from a business perspective.”

Bottarini regularly gives back to her alma mater. For example, she sits on the College of Business Board of Executive Advisors. She is also involved in organizations outside of Hyatt, serving as a co-chair of the No Room for Trafficking Council of the American Hotel and Lodging Association Foundation and as a board member of Salt and Light Coalition in Chicago. 

As the CFO, Bottarini said she has the opportunity to work on a variety of initiatives at the company, and collaborate across a number of functions. For example, she said she is an executive sponsor of the company’s HyPride diversity business resource group.

“We are committed to creating safe and welcoming experiences for our colleagues and guests,” she said. “This collaborative work I’m privileged to do across the company really comes from the well-rounded student experience I had at NIU, something that’s important and I turn to in my career even today.”

Bottarini said her time at NIU influenced her future success.

"The preparation for my first job in public accounting was exceptional," she said. "I felt confident and frankly more prepared than my peers to take on the challenge of the role. I also learned at NIU how to balance working hard while also developing key business relationship skills in my advanced classes. The students I met were driven and down-to-earth, and I’m delighted to share that two members of my team are also NIU alumni and we have a shared admiration for the experiences that prepared us for future success."