Q&A with Four Winds Casinos EVP of Administration Raquel Buari
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Raquel Buari started out at Four Winds Casinos in New Buffalo, Michigan, as an intern. In March, she was promoted to executive vice president of administration. The 37-year old is the youngest and first female in the role.
Owned by the Pokagon Band of the Potawatomi, Four Winds Casinos opened its South Bend location in 2018, the first outside of Michigan. The company added a 317-room hotel to its service offerings in 2023.
Buari spoke to Inside INdiana Business about her work as a compliance professional, traits that set her apart, the hotel expansion, and how success can come from some of the most unexpected places. This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.
What was it about the gaming industry that attracted you to even apply for that first internship?
To be quite honest with you, the only thing attractive about it was it was a paid internship. I was about to be a single mother, I was pregnant with my now-15-year old. This is my tribe’s enterprise and so I reached out to tribal citizens who were in college and they told me about the paid internship opportunity at Four Winds in New Buffalo. Paid internships back then weren’t very easy to come by. They were impressed enough with me and as my graduation drew closer they reached out and told me that they had a job for me if I wanted it. I’ve been here ever since and I don’t regret it at all.
Now, the pride that has come with the success of our operations and what that’s done for my tribal community is what has made me so emotionally attached to the organization. That’s what’s kept me here.
How has the addition of the hotel impacted the growth of the organization so far?
It’s done great for us. In the gaming industry overall, especially if the community around you isn’t seeing a large amount of population growth, there’s only so much foot traffic, you’re gonna get in the door just to gamble. So adding those other amenities really becomes key to driving people into the property who aren’t primarily gamblers, but like to eat, stay in a nice relaxing hotel, and have a spa visit. Organizations need event centers to hold their galas and their fundraising activities. So these are all wants and needs of the community that are going to bring people in our door that aren’t necessarily gamblers. And so it’s been important for us as an organization to make sure that we continue to bring people to experience our properties who aren’t necessarily going to come for slots or tables.
We’re hosting a lot of the community events at our event center now. Those folks are staying at the hotel, they’re eating at the restaurants. So it’s done really well for us and it was certainly the right move to make. South Bend is now sort of the new cash cow of the organization, but it wouldn’t have gotten there if we hadn’t continued to expand on those non-gaming amenities.
South Bend rivals New Buffalo in regards to size as well as the amount of guests we see. We expected that, and that’s why we entered the market. We knew the South Bend community had much more to offer us and we had a lot to offer the community.
What are some of the things in your life that prepared you to be where you are right now?
It’s definitely not just one factor. But one thing is that I have always been a very self-determined person, a very hard worker. I grew up seeing that in my mother; it’s something that is a part of my DNA. It’s who I am. I think that very quickly, the organization recognized that. It definitely didn’t happen overnight. It’s taken the whole 16 years for me to get into this position. But every time an opportunity arose for me to be promoted, I had always made myself the obvious choice by always producing the best output. Just setting myself apart, always being very convicted in my decisions, always being very thorough, but also being very open to other ideas. So as they came up the leaders believed in me and gave me those opportunities.
How has collaboration impacted your success so far?
Collaboration has been critical. The majority of my tenure here has been as leader of the compliance department. Compliance is that department that has to interact and receive buy-in from the entire organization, but you don’t necessarily have authority right over any one of those departments. So building relationships is very important for compliance professionals because you want folks to trust your opinion, take it seriously, and implement the things you recommend. If you don’t have good collaborative relationships with those departmental leaders, that just won’t happen. So collaboration has been key to my success and key to the organization’s success.
Were there any childhood experiences that inspired you to a life of success?
Like many people, I think it was those unpleasant childhood experiences that really drove me to be as determined as I am. I came from pretty humble beginnings. My parents were not married when we were young. My early years were in a single-mother household and so I saw my mom struggle and work several jobs. My father only had middle school education, my mother had a high school diploma. She became a mother at about 21, which is also when I became a mother as well. At that time as a single mom, she wasn’t able to continue her education, although she’s a very intelligent woman. Being a single mom, not having adequate support and needing to support us financially, she wasn’t able to get a college education as well.
Seeing so many struggles, not only in my household, but with my extended family, I knew I didn’t want that for myself in the long run. That’s where a lot of the determination came from. I wanted to be able to take care of my parents and make sure I gave back to them.
What was it like growing up multiracial? And what do you see that experience being for your children or for the next generation?
I’m African American, European and Native American. So as far as growing up as a multiracial child, it definitely brought its own challenges. For me in particular, finding identity was a struggle. A few things were at play as well. I was more advanced intellectually and there was a point in time when they wanted to push me up a class. But at the same time, I had ADHD. My mom was able to manage it and I kind of learned how to manage it on my own. And she didn’t want me to be put up a grade because she didn’t want me to be with older children.
There was a program for what they called gifted and talented students. In the fourth grade, you got put with other gifted and talented students, students that identified as high ability from the fourth to the sixth grade. Almost like a Montessori environment where the teacher tailors your curriculum to where you are as a student to make sure you were challenged. The challenging thing about that was I got essentially bused from the diverse inner city South Bend school that I was at to one of the schools in the countryside in South Bend. Most of the folks that were in this program did not look like me, they were Caucasian.
So as a young woman, I really struggled with that identity. I was trying to fit in with my white friends but I wasn’t white enough for that crowd. With my Black friends in my neighborhood, I was not Black enough. With my Native American friends from my tribe, whenever we would have our gatherings of camps and powwows, I always felt like I wasn’t native enough. So I had a long period of struggling with where I fit in. It wasn’t until well into adulthood that I finally came to a point where I felt like I could accept and appreciate all the parts of me and not try to fit in with any one of them. But as a child, it was very difficult to do that.
I feel like this younger generation is much more accepting of differences. I think we’re going in the right direction as a society, and I hope my kids aren’t going to have to deal with it so much. But I still worry about my younger girls. Our oldest girl is eight years old and there’s not a lot of brown skinned kids at that school. So I worry when she goes to school every day if she’s going to come home with some of those same worries that I had. I worry if she feels self-conscious because there’s really no other Black girls in her class. So you constantly have to do those check-ins with your child. I am optimistic for the future generations but I can’t help but worry as a parent.
Do you have any parenting tips for the multiracial executive or career professional?
What my husband and I have tried to be very intentional about is making sure our children get exposure to all sorts of all different cultures. If all of us were to expose our children more to respecting and understanding others cultures, it’s going to be much easier for our society to get where it needs to be. We take our kids to a wide variety of art events. It may be theater. It may be art exhibits that aren’t necessarily places where you would normally see Black people, especially Black kids. But we want things like that to be normalized for them. We want to break the stigmas. We can’t break them for all of society but we can for our household. So we’re not just going to take our kids to the playground and libraries where there’s just brown-skinned people. We’re gonna take them to all the spaces, so that they can be exposed to what they’re going to see out there in the real world and be able to become comfortable or at least have experience being in those spaces.
What’s one advice you were giving as a younger person that has stuck with you?
It’s a simple one: doing the right thing. Doing the right thing is of value. When you hear, “Do the right thing,” you’ll either think of Spike Lee or ethics, right? But when I say do the right thing, I’m talking from all angles. So that’s in the workplace, making sure that decisions you’re making regarding your employees is the right thing for them. Speaking up even when it’s hard to. Disagreeing even if it’s to your superior when you think something’s wrong.
That has been another thing that has earned me respect and trust for my colleagues and helped me progress in my career. People understand that I am pretty firm about doing the right thing and always have been. It’s not always the comfortable thing to do, but people respect it and you can sleep at night knowing that you’ve always at least done your best to do what you thought was the right thing.
Are there any significant mentors or role models that have influenced your personal and professional development?
From a personal standpoint, my mother was very instrumental in building my character. You couldn’t change her mind about what was right. She stood up for what was right, sort of an activist mindset. She didn’t really care whether you liked her opinion or not. She was much more blunt than I am. She gave it to you how it was but she was always very patient as well, a very serious sort of patience. She certainly taught me a lot about being tenacious but also caring and loving. It was that balance between the two that I learned from her. My father, on the other hand, was just a very sweet person. He’s just very loving and caring, not very opinionated, just relaxed. I’ve always aspired to be as sweet as he is.
Professionally, because I’ve always been going at 200 miles an hour, there’s never really been a time where I had an actual mentor/mentee relationship. I’ve always been a person that listens much more than I talk. So I’ve always sat back and watched everyone around me very closely, very keenly, all the leaders that I’ve worked with in the past and taken notes, having key takeaways from all of them. I watch how people interact and whether that served them well or not. So my leadership style is very flexible because of that. I always like to meet people where they are, but I first have to learn how that person works. Making sure I lead them in a way that’s most most impactful for them individually, instead of just having my own one style that doesn’t work for everyone.
What’s one challenge that really developed your character?
It’s a more recent challenge. In December of 2022, I lost my mother. She battled lifelong illnesses. But it wasn’t really expected that we would lose her when we did. No one can really replace the support you have from your mother. She had also been one of my “whys” for so long. I have my children and my husband now, but she had been my “why” for so long. It definitely left a void. For quite a few months, I really struggled with the grief and coming into work and being able to focus on the needs at hand. I kind of became the matriarch of the family at the same time for my father and my brother and my grandfather, her dad. So there were a lot more burdens that I took on at the same time from the family, needing to guide those men in her life.
There was a period where I felt I couldn’t really continue developing professionally, because I had all this weight, all these burdens, all this grief. Six months after we lost her, my previous role as senior vice president of HR and compliance suddenly became vacant, and a couple of leaders in the company thought I’d be great in the role. I honestly felt like I wasn’t ready for it. But then I had several people around me encouraging me to apply for the role. So I went ahead and put my hat in the ring. They gave me the confidence I needed.
I think that’s why I got selected for this role back in March, just because I had that period of time where I was able to show my effectiveness as a senior leader. So although it was difficult, I probably would not have been the obvious choice for this because I hadn’t been at that senior leader level yet. It solidified for me that everything happens for a reason. I certainly felt like my mom was proud looking down from Heaven. I’m very proud that I took that step and continued to progress despite the last couple of years being so rough. That made me realize that even through our challenges, we can pick ourselves up and end up better on the other side when it’s all said and done.
What advice would you give to an aspiring compliance professional?
Be very flexible and meet people where they are. Be strong in your recommendations, but you’ve got to be ready and willing to let someone change your mind as well. You need to understand what your goals might be for strict compliance and how that impacts the operators and the people that are actually implementing the policies, procedures and controls.
Listen more than you talk. You can learn so much from listening. It’s not just not just the substance of what someone’s saying, but the verbal cues, learning how a person operates, and really tailoring your approach to that person’s individual style of how they best absorb information, so that you can establish yourself as an ally. They’ll be much more willing to cooperate, listen and take your advice. As a compliance professional, you have to make friends, you cannot make enemies. Otherwise, you’re not going to be effective and the organization is not going to be effective. So build those respectful, trusting relationships.