As McDonald’s USA senior vice president and chief development officer, Tabassum Zalotrawala leads the restaurant development team, which focuses on accelerating the pace of McDonald’s restaurant openings, including the real estate, construction, architecture, strategy and analytics, asset, and portfolio management teams. In this role, Tabassum oversees the expansion of McDonald’s in the United States and manages a portfolio of 13,000 US McDonald’s restaurants.

Tabassum joined McDonald’s in 2023 after four years as chief development officer at Chipotle Mexican Grill, where she led a holistic restaurant turnaround strategy and all aspects of real estate development for the US, Canada, and Europe. At Chipotle, she also oversaw the Center of Excellence for Design and Construction to ensure restaurants reflected the appropriate brand image and provided a convenient and welcoming customer experience.

Prior to Chipotle, Tabassum served as chief development officer for four years at Panda Restaurant Group, where she championed a fundamental shift around innovation and development to drive growth for the organization. Before Panda, she served as senior director of store planning for Arby’s Restaurant Group.

Tabassum’s experience is matched by her ongoing extensive executive education. Her bachelor in fine arts is complemented with her completion of the Harvard Business School Advanced Management Program, an intensive program that creates transformational leaders capable of tackling an organization’s toughest challenges.

She was honored as an Exceptional Women Awardee for 2020 and serves on the International Council of Shopping Centers’ board of trustees. Tabassum also serves on the board of directors of Diamond Rock Hospitality Co., a publicly traded, self-advised real estate investment trust and is involved in nonprofit work as a sponsor for Sahiyo, an organization whose mission is to empower Asians and other communities to create positive social change through dialogue, education, and collaboration based on community involvement.

As a globally versed executive, Tabassum is active with the NACD, serving on the board of the Pacific Southwest Chapter and certified as a Board Leadership Fellow.