Jill Griffin

Jill Griffin: Profile

Jill’s most recent duties have earned her a seat in the boardroom. Since 2002, Jill has served on the Board of Directors of Luby’s, Inc. (NYSE: LUB), overseeing the restaurant chain’s critical turnaround. In four short years, Luby’s has returned to profitability, paid off all debt, enhanced shareholder value four-fold, and restored its storied Brand to prominence by winning back lapsed customers and marketing to new ones.

Jill’s string of best-selling, award-winning books on customer loyalty began publication in the mid nineties, with the release of the internationally published, business best-seller, Customer Loyalty: How to Earn It, How to Keep It. The second edition of Customer Loyalty, revised for the digital age, is on Harvard Business School’s “Working Knowledge” list of recommended books.

Jill is the co-author of Customer Winback: How to Recapture Lost Customers and Keep Them Loyal, which won Soundview Executive Book Summaries’ “30 Best Business Books” award. Her books have been translated into Chinese, Japanese, Indonesian, Portugese and Spanish.

Jill served on the University of Texas McCombs School of Business faculty from 1988 to 1990. Today, she is a frequent UT guest lecturer. Her two books have been used as textbooks for the university’s MBA and undergraduate courses on customer management.

In her early career, Jill served as senior brand manager for RJR/Nabisco’s largest brand and distinguished herself as one of the youngest brand managers in the corporation’s history. From RJR/Nabisco, Jill joined AmeriSuites Hotels as the start-up chain’s first National Director of Marketing and Sales. She launched Griffin Group in 1988.

Jill is the recipient of the 2003 Distinguished Alumna Award for the University of South Carolina Moore School of Business (received alongside Larry Kellner, Chairman and CEO of Continental Airlines) from which she holds MBA and Bachelor of Science degrees, Magna Cum Laude.

Jill’s passion is speaking to audiences world-wide about the power and pit-falls of customer loyalty. Each of her Loyalty Maker ™ presentations is “painfully customized” and loaded with industry-specific how to’s, wrapped around real-world, heart-felt stories and case studies. Jill’s in-the-trenches leadership and experience, married with her high energy, fun-loving platform style, make her a real stand-out among corporate speakers.