Most Respected Business Leader 2026: Erica Qualls-Battey

She’s hosted Presidents Clinton and Obama, baseball legend Hank Aaron and some of the world’s other influential people at her hotel through the years. But the most memorable incident in her long career in hospitality happened quietly on a Mother’s Day, when she was greeting guests at the Atlanta Marriott Marquis.

“I was wishing them a happy Mother’s Day when a young woman approached,” says Qualls-Battey, Georgia Trend’s 2026 Most Respected Business Leader. “She said, ‘You know, I haven’t spoken to my mother in 17 years.’”

That stopped Qualls-Battey, whose greatest hero was her mother. She could see the pain in the young woman’s eyes, met them with her own and said, “I need you to do one thing. You will never have another mother. Whatever is keeping you apart, please let it go and call her.”

A few weeks later, her assistant said a woman was on the phone, insisting to speak with the general manager. It sounded serious.

“It was the young woman from the lobby, and she really needed to speak with me, to thank me for asking her to call her mother,” says Qualls-Battey, her voice softening. “Now they were going on a mother-daughter cruise together. I’m telling you, it blew me away. But that’s the kind of thing that happens in our buildings, and it’s that kind of moment that makes me realize I’m in the right business.”

“The idea is, when you take care of the guests, the business takes care of itself. I’ve always loved that idea.” – Erica Qualls-Battey

As the self-described “chief host” for Marriott in Atlanta, Qualls-Battey oversees Atlanta’s Downtown, Midtown and airport hotels, while serving as general manager of the Marriott Marquis, with its 1,663 guest rooms and 160,000 square feet of meeting space in the heart of Downtown.

She’s compared her job to managing a small city – the Marquis is Georgia’s largest hotel, with some 1,000 employees. It’s a long way from the part-time gig in a California hotel that launched Qualls-Battey’s career.

Meeting Mr. Marriott

Talent From Within: Qualls-Battey worked her way up the ranks and was promoted to director of human resources at the Atlanta Marriott Marquis in 2000. Photo credit: Contributed

In the spring of 1993, Qualls-Battey was 27 and had recently given birth to her fourth child when she took a part-time job at the Santa Clara (California) Marriott. She made $7.25 an hour working Friday and Saturday nights as a PBX operator – answering and routing phone calls, assisting guests with requests and coordinating communication between departments in the wee hours.

A few weeks into the job, she met Bill Marriott, son of the company’s founders, who had turned the family restaurant business into a global hospitality industry leader.

“There he was, going into every department, shaking every associate’s hand, and I thought, ‘How wonderful and powerful – he really cares about people,’” she recalls. “He shook your hand, looked at you and made you feel good about being there. I remember thinking, ‘This is a pretty cool company to work for, where people care about people.’”

Qualls-Battey later realized she was seeing Marriott put his own corporate credo into practice: “Take care of our associates and they will take care of the customers,” she recites, adding, “that was his mantra.”

That’s been good news for Marriott employees. The company is routinely listed among the best places to work. In April, as Qualls-Battey was celebrating her 33rd anniversary with Marriott, Fortune magazine ranked the company No. 7 on its annual list of best workplaces.

“The idea is, when you take care of the guests, the business takes care of itself,” she says. “I’ve always loved that idea.”

Personal and Influential

In addition to leading Georgia’s busiest hotel, Qualls-Battey serves on “about nine boards,” including Central Atlanta Progress and the Grady Health Foundation. This work away from the office is something she’s passionate about.

“Leadership doesn’t stop at work. It extends to the communities we live in,” she says.

Positive Recognition: In 2018, the YWCA of Greater Atlanta honored Qualls-Battey at its 35th Annual Salute to Women of Achievement. Photo credit: Contributed

She chairs the Atlanta Convention & Visitors Bureau at a historic moment for the city’s hospitality industry, as the FIFA World Cup brought the largest influx of international sports fans to Atlanta since the 1996 Olympics.

According to the ACVB’s president and CEO William Pate, the right person is occupying the right place at the table.

“Erica is an exceptional leader whose influence is felt across Atlanta’s business and hospitality community,” Pate says. “Her ability to bring people together and her deep commitment to moving our city forward have earned the trust and respect of so many across Atlanta.”

She also chairs Goodwill of North Georgia, a post that is deeply personal for her.

Growing up in South Philadelphia, she was the oldest of five children raised by a strong single mother, Shaukriyyah Ali. Qualls-Battey spent a lot of time with her mother at Goodwill stores, “buying our clothes or donating them.”

When they traveled, they went by train and stayed in the homes of relatives.

“I didn’t stay in a hotel until I was 18 or 19,” she says. “And it was nothing fancy. I didn’t stay in a major hotel until I stayed in a Marriott.”

Mama Knew Best

Ali always was a go-getter. She started her own bakery. She was a hard worker who raised her children to be strong and resourceful. And she fell in love with California after visiting a friend there, so when Qualls-Battey was 15, the family moved to San Jose.

Here was a new environment: They’d gone from a close-knit African-American community in South Philly to a place that seemed more like a melting pot to Qualls-Battey.

“A lot of different people, so we learned how to adapt – and that was my mother. She always taught us about right and wrong, gave us great guidance, taught us to care about others,” Qualls-Battey says.

Award Winner: Qualls-Battey (center), with executives including Marriott International Board Chair David Marriott, far left, and Richard Marriott, board chair of Host Hotels & Resorts (to the left of Qualls-Battey), has received numerous honors, including being named Marriott’s General Manager of the Year. Photo credit: Contributed

Those are lessons that have served her well in business because her mother hammered home a strict golden rule philosophy, according to Qualls-Battey: “If you care about others, they will care about you,” which is basically just another version of Bill Marriott’s corporate mantra.

The children helped their mother get through San José City College, where Ali studied to be a dental hygienist. At 16, Qualls-Battey and her next-oldest sister, both tall for their age, were able to pass for 18 and land better-paying jobs in a department store.

By the time she took the part-time job at the Santa Clara Marriott, Qualls-Battey was married to David Fidel Bascoe with four young children and a desire to do something for herself.

So, missing more adult interaction, she took a weekend job.

“It was something I could do just for me, and still take care of my kids,” Qualls-Battey says.

She found a warm and inviting atmosphere, even in the middle of the night. Hotels, she discovered, are their own ecosystems. There’s a steady pulse of activity. Guests calling with requests. Tired travelers arriving at 2 a.m. Engineers fixing mechanical problems deep in the building while housekeepers prepare rooms for the morning.

“I was fascinated by all of it,” says Qualls-Battey, who became the hotel’s night auditor a few months later, eventually moving to finance during daylight hours. “I just fell in love with the work and with the company.”

And the company fell in love with her. Supervisors noticed when Qualls-Battey’s curiosity pushed her beyond the duties of her role, as she asked questions and watched how other departments operated.

This all played into Marriott’s culture of developing talent from within, so Qualls-Battey moved into new positions that exposed her to different sides of the operation, each role honing her understanding of the business.

“You start realizing that hotels are like communities, and everyone has a role, and when they all work together, good things happen,” she says, another echo of Ali’s golden rule thinking.

So, in 2000, when Marriott offered her a job as human resources director in Atlanta, the first person she called wasn’t her husband. It was her mother.

Qualls-Battey recalls, “I said, ‘Mommy, I really want this. Will you come to Atlanta and help me raise my children?’ And she said, ‘Of course, baby.’ No questions. Just packed up and moved with me.”

Hospitality City

As one of the country’s vibrant hospitality markets, Atlanta is a crossroads for business, entertainment and international travel. Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, consistently ranked as the busiest in the world, brings more than 100 million passengers through or to Atlanta each year. Many of them spend the night.

Business and Pleasure: Qualls-Battey with Marriott International Group President Satya Anand, to the left of her, and dozens of Marriott corporate leaders, on the stairs at the Marriott Marquis. Photo credit: Contributed

“Atlanta’s a city where people come together, and I was excited to become a part of that,” she says. “There’s always something happening.”

That is especially visible inside the Atlanta Marriott Marquis, with its soaring atrium rising some 50 stories above the lobby floor, where guests from every corner of the planet gather and chatter before heading out to explore the city.

Running a property of that size, or Marriott’s other hotels in the city, requires both operational precision and intelligence. On any given day, thousands of people move through the Marquis alone – guests, event planners, employees, delivery crews and entertainers. The responsibility is enormous, and Qualls-Battey loves it.

“I really do love the complexity of the job, and the people in it,” she says. “It really is like managing a small city, and my job is to make sure everyone feels welcome – guests and associates.”

Part of her leadership approach is to simply be around, to walk the hotel, greet employees, talk with guests, lessons she learned from Bill Marriott and others along the way. Being present.

“When leaders are present, people feel supported,” says Qualls-Battey, who is so fully immersed in Atlanta’s leadership culture, participating on so many boards, it’s as if she’s always been here.

The individual honors and awards reflect the energy she’s brought to the city: She’s been named one of Atlanta’s Top 100 Black Women of Influence by the Atlanta Business League – twice; she’s a 2010 graduate of Leadership Atlanta; she’s won numerous Marriott honors, including General Manager of the Year (an honor she also won from the Georgia Hotel and Lodging Association); and she’s been inducted into the Atlanta Hospitality Hall of Fame, among other accolades.

People Person

People arrive in hotels at virtually every stage of life, in every kind of mood. They’re on vacation, attending a wedding or a reunion, a business meeting or a funeral. There are joyful and difficult moments, and employees bring their own challenges to work each day.

“You start realizing that hotels are like communities, and everyone has a role, and when they all work together, good things happen.” – Erica Qualls-Battey

Qualls-Battey, who studied human behavior for a year at San José City College and psychology at San José State before joining Marriott, learned that understanding people was just as important as understanding operations – or even more important.

“The study of human behavior was a great way to prepare me for this work, because I truly am a people person,” she says. “I love the complexity of people, understanding what their needs are and taking care of them. Hospitality is about human behavior. You’re dealing with people from all over the world, all with different experiences and expectations.”

Metrics definitely matter in a hotel like the Marquis – operating with the complexity of a small city – where occupancy, revenue and guest satisfaction surveys are all important. But Qualls-Battey sees them as outcomes, not the mission.

“It’s a gift to take care of others,” she says. “People are our mission. Our guests, and also our associates.”

That belief was tested in ways no one in hospitality could have anticipated.

When the COVID-19 pandemic brought global travel to a standstill, the pulse and energy that defines hotels like the Marquis and Marriott’s other properties disappeared almost overnight. Lobbies emptied. Events vanished. The constant motion slowed to something unfamiliar and unsettling.

But the buildings didn’t go fully dark.

Marriott’s doors stayed open in part to support essential travel tied to Delta Air Lines. The operation shrank dramatically – a skeleton crew of leaders and staff keeping the property running – but the sense of responsibility grew.

“The toughest decision I had to make was to let [people] go for a short duration of time,” Qualls-Battey says. “But it was important that they knew we cared about them.”

Leaders stepped into unfamiliar roles to keep operations moving. Food that would have gone unused was distributed to employees. Cars lined up outside the Marquis as staff members handed out supplies to now-unemployed colleagues navigating through sudden uncertainty.

At the same time, Qualls-Battey stayed in direct contact with her team, making calls, offering reassurance where she could, maintaining a sense of connection in a disconnected time. Many employees came back. Others moved on. But the foundation held.

That resilience is shaping how she thinks about what comes next.

Community Involvement: Qualls-Battey, with Delta Air Lines CEO Ed Bastian, left, Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens, center right, and William Pate, president and CEO of the Atlanta Convention & Visitors Bureau, right, serves as board chair of the ACVB. Photo credit: Contributed

The World Comes to Town

As the FIFA World Cup brought an influx of international visitors earlier this summer, Qualls-Battey embraced it as an opportunity to enhance Atlanta’s identity.

“I’m really proud of this city,” she says. “I love how we’ve rallied as a community.”

The community was confronted with a challenge in March when FIFA announced it was canceling nearly 1,000 hotel rooms in Atlanta, including many at the Marriott Marquis. The cancellations came amid fears about immigration enforcement and global uncertainty. But travel experts remained optimistic that domestic visitors would snap up those rooms.

And when those visitors got here, Qualls-Battey had some expectations of her own – the things she looks for when she’s traveling. As one of the perks of her job, she’s stayed at Marriotts all over the world. And when she’s a guest, she expects the room will be squeaky clean, the beds made, the coffee pods and towels well stocked and so forth.

But those things are not on top of Qualls-Battey’s list.

“The first thing I look for is a smile on the face of the doorman,” she says. “After that, yes – I look for a squeaky-clean hotel, I look for great food in the hotel and I interact with the team, just to check in, see how they feel. And I can tell you this with confidence – when people are taking care of people, they have such a wonderful disposition.”