BY DEBBIE SELINSKY
Perseverance
Furthers
Chris Haque graduated from the school
of hard knocks—with honors
t
Life has not been easy—personally or professionally—for Chris Haque (pronounced Hawk), who was born in Dinajpur, Bangladesh.
He was only 15 when his sister came
o the U.S. for medical treatment for
leukemia. Thanks to his gift of his bone
marrow donation, she lived three more
years before the disease took her.
More recently, his 28-year-old brother
also died of the disease. “Losing two
members of my family to leukemia has
been painful,” he says.
a
He attended Hollywood High School
nd he recalls seeing Steven Seagal come
by to perform for the students.
Haque took another hit when he was
denied admission to California State University because he couldn’t afford tuition. “I
didn’t know how to ‘play the game’ then,”
he recalls of his efforts to garner financial
assistance. So he went to work as a manager at Church’s Chicken and earned an
associate degree in electronics.
A year later, the determined youth
went back to Cal State, where he stud-
a
ied accounting and business to earn his
undergraduate degree.
Because of his hard work, work ethic
and initiative, he was promoted quickly—
area manager, director of operations—in
Anil Kashep’s 82 Church’s franchises in
California. Haque believes you have to
create your own opportunities, so he
took over HR, training, and operation
compliance duties. Pretty soon he was
in charge of three departments.
After 10 years, he left the company when
bankruptcy trustee took over. Haque then
