Dr. Sandra Kay Lee, MBA, has excelled as the owner, president and chief executive officer of Creative Dining Services, a privately owned hospitality company, since 2025. Under her guidance, the organization has grown to encompass approximately 1,700 employees across 16 states, managing more than 70 partnerships. Dr. Lee is responsible for charting the company’s strategic direction, aligning its vision with stakeholder expectations and ensuring teams are equipped with the resources and support necessary to deliver exceptional results.
Furthermore, Dr. Lee is recognized for her high-visibility leadership, community engagement and commitment to building strong relationships through networking and partnership development. Her oversight extends to brand positioning, reputation management and maintaining a focus on safety, operational excellence and consistent service delivery.
Creative Dining Services distinguishes itself through adaptability and accessibility, serving higher education institutions, kindergarten through twelfth-grade boarding schools, corporate dining clients and specialized sectors such as nuclear power plants. The company is also expanding into senior living and health care, including hospitals and senior facilities. Dr. Lee’s approach emphasizes tailored solutions for each client, leveraging the organization’s smaller size to maintain close relationships with university presidents and other stakeholders who value direct access to her leadership team.
Dr. Lee describes her team as small but formidable, united by a deep sense of care for one another and those they serve. She takes pride in fostering an environment where staff members know students by name and former students return to reconnect with familiar faces. Dr. Lee ensures that hourly employees receive compensation packages that set the company apart within the industry.
Prior to founding Creative Dining Services, Dr. Lee found success with Chartwells Higher Education Dining Services between 2017 and 2025, including as a regional vice president, senior vice president, and division president during this tenure. In these roles, she was instrumental in driving growth initiatives, overseeing large-scale operations and developing strategies that enhanced service delivery across multiple campuses nationwide. In 2017, Dr. Lee briefly worked as an operations leader in airline catering at Delta Air Lines’ Boston Catering Center, where she contributed her expertise in food services to support complex logistical operations.
From 2011 to 2016, Dr. Lee held dual roles at Au Bon Pain as vice president of training and vice president of operations services. During this period, she led initiatives focused on operational excellence and workforce development until the company’s acquisition by Panera. Dr. Lee was previously active in multiple administrative positions at Denny’s from 2007 to 2011, Ruby Tuesday from 2005 to 2007, Bugaboo Creek Steakhouse from 2003 to 2005, and Olive Garden from 2001 to 2003.
Dr. Lee’s professional journey followed five years of service in the U.S. Army, where she initially focused on human resources before transitioning into psychological operations. Her military tenure included roles as drill instructor, leadership instructor and liaison to the German military unit in Fulda, Germany.
Throughout her career, Dr. Lee has been recognized for her expertise in food services and contract catering. A member of the global advisory board of Forttuna Councils since 2026, she is also affiliated with Women We Admire, the Boys & Girls Clubs of Greater Southwest Michigan, Golden Key International Honour Society, and the National Honor Society. Dr. Lee’s commitment to professional growth is reflected in her active participation in speaking engagements and panel discussions across the industry, through which she continues to share insights on leadership development and organizational strategy.
To support her professional ambitions, Dr. Lee pursued an education at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville, from which she earned a Master of Business Administration degree specializing in supply chain management, procurement and LEAN processes in 2007. She continued her studies with a Master of Science in education with a focus on curriculum development and implementation from Purdue University in 2015. She ultimately graduated from Maryville University with a Doctor of Education in 2022. Subsequently obtaining an executive education credential from Wharton Executive Education in 2023, Dr. Lee has also acquired myriad certifications in her field from CITI and Villanova University.
Dr. Lee attributes her success to the strong foundation provided by her parents, including her mother instilling a sense of adventure and her father imparting direction through his disciplined military background, and credits her military experience for teaching teamwork, responsibility and resilience under pressure. Among her proudest moments is witnessing one of her managers achieve promotion to general manager—a milestone he once believed unattainable—after she recognized his potential when others focused only on his weaknesses.
Professionally, Dr. Lee has received numerous accolades such as being named among the Top 50 Women Leaders in Illinois by Women We Admire in 2022, 2024 and 2026. She also proudly received the Joe R. Lee Diamond Club Award at Darden Restaurants in 2000, the Olive Garden Michelangelo Award in 2001, and the ATD BEST Training Award at Ruby Tuesday in both 2006 and 2007
Dr. Lee’s most notable achievement is her appointment as a representative to the United Nations Economic and Social Council—a lifelong aspiration inspired by her early years walking past United Nations headquarters in New York City. In this capacity, she collaborates with the Africana Women Working Group on initiatives empowering women across African nations through microloans, sustainable farming education and nutritional strategies aimed at eliminating food insecurity locally and globally. These efforts align closely with Creative Dining Services’ philanthropic mission to leverage its resources for community benefit.
Looking toward the future, Dr. Lee envisions significant expansion for Creative Dining Services across all business segments while maintaining its core values of quality service delivery and employee well-being. Her goal is to broaden access to high-quality food prepared by her organization’s chefs—ultimately reaching millions daily—while providing opportunities for long-term employees, their families and communities served by Creative Dining Services’ evolving divisions such as Creative Lifestyles for senior living environments or Creative Collegiate for academic institutions.