Toni Oliver’s career of service and teamwork
With 20 years of experience as an EA and a career in the U.S. Navy, Toni Oliver has learned the most impactful leadership happens behind the scenes.
At 20 years old, Toni Oliver left Alabama for her first duty station with the U.S. Navy in Japan.
Far from home, Toni learned the true meaning of solidarity. On those incredibly hard days, her team relied on each other, looked out for one another, and carried the weight together.
Toni feels that same sense of responsibility for the people at Driven Brands.
Today, as Sr. Executive Administrator to Driven Brands’ CFO, CIO and CCO, she supports some of the company’s senior leaders and the teams around them.
“If I can make the team’s life easier, then I’m happy,” Toni says.
That mindset speaks to who Toni is both personally and professionally. When the people around her can do their best work, she knows she’s doing hers.
The hardest days define a team
Toni joined the U.S. Navy in 2004 and says adjusting to life in Japan was a culture shock.
Then came her first deployment: In 2005, Toni went to Indonesia to support relief efforts after the devastating tsunami. She couldn’t always call home, and when she could, it was hard to explain the destruction around her.
The people serving beside her became the only ones she could lean on.
“You have to depend on everyone around you,” Toni says. “Your job doesn’t work without them.”
One day during the relief effort, Toni and her team worked for 22 hours straight moving pallets of water. She remembers watching a senior leader put on his coveralls and work alongside them.
“When you’re going through it and your leaders understand how hard it is, true leadership will get down in the trenches with you,” she says.
Today, Toni still thinks about teamwork as a collection of people bringing different pieces to the table.
“You have a piece; I have a piece. But all those pieces make the whole,” she says.
“Everything is figure-outable”
After the Navy, Toni built a career supporting senior leaders as an executive assistant. She’s become comfortable with one certainty: No two days will ever look the same.
At Driven Brands, Toni’s day might cover travel plans, event logistics, process improvement, stakeholder management, budgets, and projects across different parts of the organization. She manages her leaders’ time, filtering what needs their focus and handling what doesn’t.
And she doesn’t need to be an expert in every function she touches. She just needs to be able to connect the dots and know where to go next.
That’s where Toni’s favorite phrase comes in: “Everything is figure-outable.”
“Maybe I can’t do it, but I can get you to someone who can,” she says.
Problem heard, problem solved
After a recent Finance All Hands, Toni heard employees wanted an easier way to find information and see what’s happening in the department.
She took that feedback and created a centralized SharePoint site and a Finance Forward Council to bring employees into the process. She even introduced a quarterly department spotlight to show how different teams contribute across the organization.
“This is the work EAs are positioned to take on,” Toni says. “We see every team and every department. We’re an executive business partner.”
For Toni, taking Pride in Performance often means her own work might go unseen, but that’s okay because her impact is undeniable.
“I’m here to take some of the load off so you can concentrate on the things you need to concentrate on,” Toni says. “When you’re doing good, the business is doing good. Driven is doing good.”