First female Global CEO in Tony Roma's 54-year history. Practicing attorney. Law professor. A voice on the world's biggest stages — from Davos to the UN General Assembly.
First female Global CEO in Tony Roma's 54-year history. Practicing attorney. Law professor. A voice on the world's biggest stages — from Davos to the UN General Assembly.
Mohaimina "Mina" Haque, Esq. is a trailblazing attorney, global CEO, keynote speaker, and law professor whose career spans the boardroom, the courtroom, the classroom, and the world's most consequential policy stages.
As the first female Global CEO in Tony Roma's 54-year history, she leads a legendary brand operating across 20+ countries — bringing to that role a rare combination of legal precision, entrepreneurial vision, and operational command that few executives anywhere can match.
Haque built her legal foundation early, working at the White House, the U.S. Department of Justice, and Senator Ted Kennedy's office before establishing herself as a force in both private practice and corporate leadership. Today she holds both worlds simultaneously — negotiating franchise agreements across continents while arguing cases in court and shaping the next generation of lawyers as an Adjunct Professor at American University Washington College of Law.
She does not speak about what is possible. She is proof of it.
"I didn't just break the glass ceiling — I brought the whole building with me."
Mina Haque — Keynote Speaker
From the World Economic Forum in Davos to Cannes Lions, the UN General Assembly, and Bloomberg TV — Mina brings the rare perspective of someone who has lived at the intersection of law, leadership, and legacy transformation.
Mina's signature keynote. Not motivational fluff — a rigorous framework for seeing hard facts clearly while refusing to surrender the outcome. Drawn from her career, her turnaround of a 54-year-old global brand, and her life.
How Mina took a 54-year-old restaurant company and operated it with the urgency, leanness, and creativity of a startup. Cost discipline, speed, brand relevance, and the hard truth: nostalgia alone is never enough.
Risk, negotiation, contracts, compliance, pattern recognition — and how legal thinking sharpens business judgment without making a leader paralyzed by caution. A talk that reframes legal background as a competitive weapon.
Breaking from traditional career expectations to build your own business, firm, niche, or platform. Mina draws on teaching law practice management, building a remote law firm, and running a global brand simultaneously.
Running a global brand in countries with different laws, ingredients, labor expectations, and cultural norms. The bigger lesson: global growth requires humility. Your original model will not travel unchanged.
People at the top of their fields who still have to prove, document, and defend their value. The deeper theme: ambition, evidence, opportunity, and how global talent shapes American business and culture.
Mina is available for live TV, podcast appearances, panel moderation, and print commentary on all of the above. Vetted by major networks as a credible on-air expert.
The most successful leaders treat themselves like a franchise — they build a replicable system of value, protect their brand, scale through others, and evolve without losing their identity.
Just as a franchise turns one great restaurant into fifty, The Franchise of Self™ turns individual leadership into scalable, transferable, durable power. A framework born from running a 54-year-old global brand, practicing law, and speaking at Davos and the UN General Assembly.
Before you can franchise anything, you have to know exactly what you're selling. Most women leaders skip this step — they let the market define them instead of defining themselves.
This operation is about radical clarity: What is your unique value proposition as a leader? What do you stand for that no one else credibly can? A franchise doesn't try to be everything to everyone. McDonald's doesn't sell sushi. Your leadership brand shouldn't either. This is where ambition stops being a dirty word and becomes a strategic position — you define your category, or someone else puts you in theirs.
Every franchise has an operations manual. What's yours? If someone had to replicate your leadership approach tomorrow — the way you make decisions, the way you show up in a room — could they? If not, you don't have a brand. You have a personality. Personalities don't scale.
A franchise is worthless without a system. The system is what makes one location in Tokyo perform like one in Texas. For leaders, the system is your community — the people and networks that allow your influence to operate even when you're not in the room.
Most people network. Franchise-builders create ecosystems. The difference is structural: a network serves you, an ecosystem serves itself and you benefit. Your pack isn't just people who like you — it's people who can execute your vision, challenge your thinking, open doors you don't even know exist, and represent your brand when you're not there.
Map your network like a franchise territory map. Where are you over-saturated? Where do you have no coverage? Which relationships are profitable — generating more value than they consume — and which are you subsidizing out of guilt or habit?
Here's where most leadership frameworks stop — at influence. The Franchise of Self™ doesn't stop there because influence without ownership is renting your power.
A franchise owner doesn't just manage the restaurant. They own the real estate, the territory rights, the P&L. For women and underrepresented leaders, this operation is about converting influence into actual equity — capital, ownership stakes, decision-making authority, legal rights, and financial independence. This operation draws directly on both sides of Mina's career: the legal architecture of ownership and the executive reality of running a business where the buck stops with you.
Audit your 'ownership portfolio.' Not just financial — do you own your intellectual property? Your client relationships? Your professional reputation independent of your employer? Your time? Most leaders discover they own far less than they think.
A franchise that can't adapt dies. Blockbuster had 9,000 locations. A franchise that evolves — that treats change not as a threat but as a growth catalyst — becomes generational.
This is the neuroplasticity of leadership. Just as the brain rewires itself in response to new challenges, your franchise of self must be designed to evolve. Most leaders resist scaling because they confuse scaling with diluting. The franchise model proves the opposite — the person who builds the system is more valuable than the person who runs one unit. Ray Kroc didn't flip burgers. He built the system that made flipping burgers a $200 billion enterprise.
What would it look like to open a 'second location' of yourself? Could you train someone to deliver your keynote? License your methodology? Create a certification? If the answer is no, you haven't built a franchise. You've built a job.
Like a franchise system, you're always simultaneously defining, building, owning, and scaling. A new market entry takes you back to Operation 1. A new partnership triggers Operation 2. A new funding round is Operation 3. A pivot is Operation 4. Then you loop again.
It's not abstract — it's operational. Every operation has a concrete audit, a diagnostic, and an action plan. This isn't motivational speaking. It's a methodology. And it's Mina's alone — no one else in the leadership space has run a 54-year-old global franchise, practiced law, and spoken at Davos and UNGA.
Available as a keynote, half-day workshop, or executive masterclass. Customized for MBA programs, women's leadership summits, franchise conferences, and C-suite retreats.
Mina Haque discusses the brand's international expansion and the future of legacy restaurant chains on Bloomberg Television.
Inc. Magazine profiles Mina Haque's unconventional approach to brand transformation through cognitive science and neuroplasticity.
Forbes explores Mina's vision for democratizing entrepreneurship and creating pathways for the next generation of female business leaders.
Entrepreneur Magazine examines the strategic vision and leadership approach Mina Haque is bringing to Tony Roma's global revival.
Politico's Playbook PM newsletter spotlights Mina Haque as a co-host of the inaugural Eid Reception at the Smithsonian National Museum of Asian Art — alongside PBS NewsHour anchor Amna Nawaz, actor Aasif Mandvi, and Vox Editor-in-Chief Swati Sharma. (Newsletter link — may require login)
FSR Magazine covers Mina Haque's Gold Stevie Award win at the 23rd Annual American Business Awards for Achievement in Organization Recovery.
Restaurant Business Online covers the historic appointment of Mina Haque as the first female permanent Global CEO in Tony Roma's history.
Nation's Restaurant News names Mina Haque to its prestigious Power List of the most influential women in the foodservice industry.
Her Agenda profiles Mina Haque on running a global restaurant brand and a thriving law firm simultaneously — and her mission to lower barriers for women franchise owners.
NRN Editor-in-Chief Sam Oches interviews Mina Haque on her unconventional path from attorney to global CEO, and her bold vision for Tony Roma's 2.0.
Attorney at Law Magazine profiles Mina Haque's journey from White House intern and DOJ honors attorney to founding her own firm and leading a global restaurant brand across five continents.
A live Bloomberg TV conversation about the future of legacy restaurant brands, global franchise strategy, and what it takes to lead a 54-year-old company in the modern era.
Mina Haque joins Bloomberg The Close to discuss the restaurant industry landscape, Tony Roma's international expansion plans, and her leadership philosophy.
Mina Haque's first appearance on Scripps News, discussing her dual career as a practicing attorney and global CEO, and what that unique perspective means for business leadership.
A follow-up conversation on Scripps News exploring Mina's vision for Tony Roma's 2.0 and her perspective on women in executive leadership roles.
Mina Haque appears live on CBS News Sacramento sharing practical entrepreneurship insights and business-building strategies for aspiring founders.
Mina brings the classroom to life with the kind of perspective no textbook can replicate — the view from inside a global C-suite, a courtroom, and a franchise boardroom, all at once. She has been invited to Cornell, NYU, and the University of North Texas to speak on what it actually takes to lead at the highest level.
Invited by visiting lecturer Prof. Jill Hellman to bring practitioner perspective to her graduate course on innovation strategy. Mina shared how she applied unconventional thinking to revive a 54-year-old global brand — drawing on her dual role as CEO and attorney to illustrate how legal precision and startup agility can coexist at the executive level.
Delivered a candid, high-impact session for graduate students on the realities of C-suite leadership — covering how to build authority, navigate boardroom dynamics, manage crises under public scrutiny, and create a leadership identity that transcends any single role or title.
Spoke to business students about the intersection of law, entrepreneurship, and executive leadership — sharing how a non-traditional background in immigration law and DOJ work became a competitive advantage in the global franchise industry.
Invite Mina to speak to your students — MBA, JD, LLM, PhD, or executive program.
She brings the C-suite, the courtroom, and the boardroom into the classroom — the kind of perspective that changes how students think about leadership forever.
Invite Mina to LectureSelected from a cohort of exceptional executive women including C-suite leaders from Netflix, Alphabet, Anthropic, Citigroup, Land O'Lakes, and SKIMS — recognized alongside pioneers like Fei-Fei Li and Daniela Amodei.
Mina Haque's work is not about short-term wins. It is about creating institutions — brands, legal frameworks, and leadership cultures — that endure. Her vision for Tony Roma's, her advocacy for women in business, and her work in the classroom are all expressions of the same conviction: that great leadership leaves something behind worth inheriting.
Whether you are planning a keynote, a panel, a corporate event, or a media appearance — Mina brings a perspective that moves audiences and drives action.
