A Crash Course in Crisis Management: Senior Food Services Executive Victoria Vega '88 Shares Her Experience at Ground Zero on 9/11

When disaster struck on the morning of September 11, 2001, Isenberg grad Victoria Vega (HTM, ’88) was at the World Trade Center, in her customary role as global director of dining services for Deutsche Bank (DB). “When the first plane hit, nobody looked up. We didn’t see smoke. Everyone went back to work,” she recalled. “When the second plane hit [20 minutes later], we completely lost power. I gathered everyone I could [Vega was responsible for 117 employees on four different floors] . . . and we ran to our site at 10 Wall Street. . . as fast as we could to avoid a cloud of debris like a tsunami.”

DB’s Wall Street site was shuttered so Vega and some of her employees grabbed a ferry in Battery Park, eventually making their way to the firm’s command center in Jersey City. Struggling with disruptions in phone service, Vega took 4 days, using a company “call tree,” to locate her entire staff. By the end of the week, the company had set up a remote trading floor in a warehouse and Vega was in charge of food service operations that fed 5000 DB employees.

Vega, who shared this experience during her lecture, “Crisis Management and Contingency Planning for Business Continuity” told the more than 150 attendees that regardless of whether you’re running a restaurant, hotel, cruise ship or other facility that caters to the public, you must have a well-rehearsed crisis management plan in place. “If you don’t, how can you find a solution to an unfolding emergency?” she asked.”

During her day-long visit to campus, Vega explored human resources and food services management in separate HTM classes. Her school-wide presentation, with riveting graphics and her own personal account of managing her food-service team’s crisis during the 9/11 disaster, merited status of an unforgettable TED talk.

Weeks after the evacuation, donning a protective suit, Vega returned to her former work site at ground zero, during DB’s asset recovery initiative. In spite of her painstaking precautions, she contracted a rare syndrome that took her five years to shake.

“You can’t eliminate risk,” Vega emphasized, “but you can mitigate it through effective pre-crisis planning, rehearsing, and anticipation of potential crises and their ripple effects. You can never be totally prepared, she added, but you can manage by compartmentalizing your emotions and staying calm. It’s critical to anticipate the likely chain of events and to keep a log of the events as they unfold. And, of course, keep your team informed, and direct them to safety.”

Vega is Division Vice President of Corporate Culinary Operations & Sales at the Boston-based food and dining management services firm, Unidine. Founded in 2001, the company, with its emphasis on meals made completely from scratch through sourced fresh food from local markets, has expanded its initial footprint from senior living and health-care clients to embrace corporate, private-school, community-college, and government markets. “We are utterly adaptable to each client, to their regional cuisines and local food ecosystems," remarks Vega.