Tom Baltimore: A Darden Alum’s Journey From Humble Beginnings to Corporate CEO

“She would point at our school and say, ‘That’s your school. Do your best. Don’t embarrass me.’ She had that sixth sense that this is the key,” Baltimore Jr. said of his mother.

The lessons weren’t lost on him.

“As a minority kid growing up and wanting to get ahead, I knew I had to be as good, if not better than others. I had to work harder,” he said. “I didn’t complain about that. I just accepted it.”

Later, as a Darden student who was then beginning to climb the ladder of success in business, Baltimore heard a phrase that would stick. It motivated him in future years, but at the same time reminded him of what he was feeling as a kid, full of ambition but lacking experience.

“If you want to change something, your level of dissatisfaction has to be greater than the cost of change,” he remembered. “I grew up in a very humble background. I just made up my mind I was going to live differently. Once I accepted that, I was prepared to work harder.” It is widely known that Baltimore works six days a week. You can usually find him in the office on Sundays.

Athlete to Accounting

Rev. Baltimore realized his dream to become a Baptist minister. His son, meanwhile, had his own dream at the time. It turned out the younger Baltimore was a pretty solid basketball player in high school. In an era marked by the emergence of superstars such as Michael Jordan at the University of North Carolina, Johnny Dawkins at Duke University, and Len Bias at the University of Maryland, an inspired Tom Baltimore was eager to play college ball. He landed at Baldwin Wallace College, a Division III school, now a university, in Ohio – passing up an offer of admission at UVA (“but not to play basketball,” he laughed).

“The basketball was good. I enjoyed it,” he said, chuckling at the hectic memory of playing and studying and working at the same time. “But I got it out of my system, and I learned quickly that I had a much better chance in life through academics than I ever would in basketball.”

Though he didn’t enter UVA as a first-year, Baltimore had friends who did, and he visited them occasionally, which only stoked his growing interest in coming to Grounds once the basketball experiment was winding down. The other thing he was good at through high school was accounting. (This early interest helped spark curiosity in investing, financial management and real estate – core specialties across his professional career.)

So now, Baltimore charted a new path.

He would transfer to UVA and set his sights on the McIntire School, arriving in fall of 1982. In a blur of a first year, Baltimore satisfied all the basic prerequisites while also working.

Baltimore said he “immediately loved” UVA. The Grounds, tradition and history appealed to him. He felt welcomed, and enjoyed the nucleus of friends already here. The academic rigor demanded attention, but he never worried about grades.

“My biggest fear as an undergrad was that somebody would show up with a bill, because I had no safety net,” he said. “My anxiety was around the financial cost. I knew I could do the work.”

That feeling never completely left. In fact, it motivated him and his wife, Hillary, later in life – once they achieved a higher degree of financial security – to give to the University to establish and support a variety of endowed scholarships and fellowships for minority students. One of those, the Sylvia V. Terry Scholarship, honors a former assistant dean of admission, who in the early 1980s kept tabs on young Tom Baltimore and helped him transition to UVA from Ohio.  He also established scholarships at the Jefferson Scholars Foundation and Darden.

“It’s about helping kids, particularly from disadvantaged backgrounds, because I remember what that was like,” Baltimore said.

Prayer, Preparation, Perseverance

If you Google “Tom Baltimore Jr.,” the search results will turn up career- and business-oriented webpages and press releases from his current and former companies. There’s the occasional news article. You won’t find any social media. Not from accounts run by him, anyway. No tweets or Facebook posts. Not even LinkedIn. His two children, Thomas III and Hannah, roll their eyes now and then at his decision to avoid social media, but Baltimore just hasn’t felt the need.

One item that comes up in the search results is a virtual discussion Baltimore participated in as part of the McIntire Black Alumni and Student networking event in the summer of 2020. He remains active with McIntire, has guest-lectured for more than a decade at Darden, and serves on the board of University of Virginia Investment Management Company, the entity that manages the University’s endowment. He is a former member of the Darden Foundation Board of Trustees and the school’s Racial Equity Cabinet, and is a member of the UVA Real Estate Group. He is also a member of the Principal Donors Society, recognizing those who have invested $1 million or more in Darden, and a winner of the Charles C. Abbott Award, the highest honor the School bestows upon alumni. Baltimore previously served on the Jefferson Scholars Foundation board, and UVA’s Bicentennial Commission.

Because he speaks frequently to various audiences, the themes around his family experiences and career path are consistently represented. He also has an interesting way of boiling down decades of life and work experience into three words that he connects with his successes.

Prayer. Preparation. Perseverance.

Like his earlier life lessons around work ethic and education, these come across as straightforward and simple. And I was curious about why they are so important to him.

Tom Baltimore rings the opening bell of the New York Stock exchange on Jan. 11, 2017, soon after Park Hotels & Resorts was listed as a public company. (Photo courtesy Park Hotels & Resorts)

Given his father’s vocation and passion (the J. in their shared name stands for Jeremiah, a Biblical prophet), Baltimore’s faith and his reliance on prayer aren’t surprising.

“I think it’s important to be centered. It’s important to be grounded,” he said. “One of the many things that my late father taught me was to make sure that you have a respect and appreciation for different religions. And that you also develop your own relationship with Jesus Christ – certainly, my Lord and savior.

“So, for me, having that prayer – whether it’s a daily prayer or whether it’s taking time to have grace and humility – is a way of grounding you. For me, that’s an anchor that’s really important.”

Preparation, his second guiding principle, applies universally.

“If you want to be a good baseball player or a good writer or a good doctor, you’ve got to prepare and you’ve got to work hard,” Baltimore said. “You can look across industries, across professions. It’s really important. And I always say the harder I work, the luckier I get.”

As for perseverance, Baltimore describes it as no less than the “secret sauce of life.”

“Bad things will happen to good people. There are going to be setbacks in your life,” he said. “It’s really how you respond to them.”

As CEO, Baltimore encountered his most difficult leadership challenges during the COVID-19 pandemic. “Its impact on the lodging and travel industries eclipsed the economic shocks of the 9/11 terror attacks and the great financial crisis of 2008-09 combined,” Baltimore said.

Park Hotels & Resorts suspended operations at 85% of its hotel rooms nationally, decimating revenue in a business with high operating leverage and continuing fixed costs. In first quarter earnings results from 2020 – near the height of the pandemic – Park reported a net loss of $689 million. The company later suspended dividend payments to shareholders, cut capital expenses, and raised three bond offerings to pay off debt and push out maturities on other debt. In March 2020, Baltimore waived his salary for the balance of the year.

The moves – and these are just a few of them – were drastic, but necessary.

“People were understandably panicked and fearful,” he recalled. “The stress was unprecedented.”

The time was nigh for serious perseverance. Those immediate moves were intended to slow the bleeding and buy time for the development of COVID vaccines and therapies and a hoped-for return to more normal economic conditions. Baltimore’s way through as an executive was to rely on the strong team he had assembled and the support and input of Park’s board. None of it was easy.

“How do you keep a team together? It is important to remain calm and steady in the face of a crisis. You have to remain laser-focused on key priorities. How do you navigate through that?” he said. “You learn a lot about yourself in the face of adversity. If you think about planting a seed in the ground. It gets germinated. It grows in the dark places. That ability to be able to navigate through tough times is a great example of perseverance. I’ve always believed that that’s the secret sauce of life.”

Park’s share price hasn’t bounced all the way back to pre-pandemic levels, but the return of travel has certainly boosted the company. In August, it reported a second-quarter profit of $154 million.