Maya Pri-Tal Ohana – Flynn Group

In 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic triggered an avalanche of new restrictions on the workplaces of essential workers, ranging from health and safety guidelines to wage and hour legislation to emerging privacy rules.  In a moment, restaurants were transformed into a heavily regulated industry. As many brick-and-mortar operators struggled to keep up with the onslaught of city, county, state, and federal rulemaking, Flynn Group—the country’s largest franchisee, then known as Flynn Restaurant Group—doubled down on its commitment to premier operations by investing in its first legal compliance professional: Maya Pri-Tal Ohana.

Maya Pri-Tal Ohana | Flynn Group | Associate General Counsel, Compliance

Ohana, now the associate general counsel of compliance, leads the innovative Compliance practice for what has become the world’s largest franchise operator. With over 2,900 restaurants and fitness clubs spread across 44 states and three countries, including beloved brands Applebee’s, Panera Bread, Taco Bell, Arby’s, Pizza Hut, Wendy’s and Planet Fitness, Flynn Group generates more than $5 billion in annual sales and employs over 75,000 people. Ohana led the charge in creating a compliance plan and implementing reporting processes where they did not previously exist. Now, over three years in, Compliance under Ohana’s leadership has become a key element in achieving Flynn’s mission to be the premier franchise operator in the world.

Mission-driven, values-centered

At Flynn, compliance is not a box-checking exercise—it is a crucial function that supports the business’ relentless pursuit of excellence and delivers on one of its core values: caring genuinely for people.

“The common denominator across the many talented people at Flynn Group is the depth of their care – about their work, each other, and the guests and communities we serve. We approach compliance as fulfilling a promise to our people—we need to get it right,” Ohana explains.

Getting it right for Ohana means more than technical compliance with laws and staying on top of legal trends. It means supporting the business and fostering a premier workplace where employees are set up to succeed and where accountability is key.

Balancing innovation and risk

Being mission-driven alone is not enough – many organizations struggle to balance mission against the realities of running a business.  Ohana views the role of Compliance as one that helps eliminate the noise so operators can focus on what they do best. Ohana endeavors to strike a balance between supporting decision-making that is meaningful to operations and limiting decisions that create inefficiencies without driving value. One example—specific policies used to be set by each market, meaning hundreds of different policies that needed to be drafted, configured, and managed, despite addressing the same topic.

With the company size doubling in 2021, with 30 percent annualized growth, and with no end in sight to this company’s growth story, the opportunity cost of such customization that lacked any real value to the business became too high.  Now, policy creation has been streamlined, reducing the number of policies to a fraction of what they once were without losing the autonomy that is vital to the company’s success.

This focus on understanding what is and is not meaningful to operations has paid dividends – Flynn’s Group’s operators have bought into a discipline traditionally viewed as a necessary evil and (sometimes rightly) looked upon with wariness and skepticism. A sign of Ohana’s success in championing compliance and her alignment with Flynn Group values is she was the first team member outside of the company’s headquarters to win the company’s “Only the Best” award – its top honor.

To help understand where Compliance can add value and align with the goals of Operations, Ohana is relentless in seeking to understand the day-to-day life of operators.

“I have made it a point to spend as much time in our restaurants as possible to understand better the challenges and frustrations that our operators face. I want to solve their problems and eliminate the distractions that I can while boosting overall compliance. You can learn a lot when you spend time in the back of the house, as anyone who has worked in a restaurant can attest,” she says.

For Ohana, if you’ve never had the chance to observe and work shoulder-to-shoulder with team members making sandwiches or fries during the lunch rush, you’ll never be able to provide them with solutions that work for them.

Respect and trust as a leader

Ohana’s leadership extends beyond compliance to team building and talent development. Her small but growing department has secured top talent, which she attributes to their challenging and exciting work. Compliance is a critical, high-stakes part of Flynn’s operations, keeping team members engaged and invested in their roles.

“We are privileged to have insight into so many different aspects of the business, meaning we are always learning and growing and identifying new ways to continue to provide our business partners with exceptional service,” she says.

A key part of her leadership philosophy, influenced by Flynn’s General Counsel Jacqueline Lee, is understanding the difference between being a mentor and a champion. While mentors offer advice and guidance, champions actively promote the growth and advancement of their team members.

“I think many of us have heard the quote about wanting the type of leader to mention your name in a room full of opportunity. That is the type of champion I have in Jaci [Lee], and that is the type of leader I aspire to be,” Ohana says.

Ohana’s path to becoming an attorney wasn’t planned. She started with a solid academic foundation, earning her JD from the University of California, College of the Law, San Francisco, and a Bachelor’s in French and Business from the University of Arizona. Her career began in litigation, where she honed skills that would become crucial in her subsequent roles. Though she hadn’t always envisioned an in-house position, she was drawn to the exceptional attorneys that make up Flynn Group’s legal team and the satisfaction of being able to help solve problems facing the business.  This has ended up a better match than she could have anticipated, enabling her to thrive in a role she did not otherwise anticipate or plan for.

Her upbringing has deeply influenced her worldview. Raised in a multicultural household, Ohana’s family history instilled a robust appreciation for and desire to seek diverse perspectives. A transformative experience living in France as a child taught her adaptability and expanded her global outlook.

Today, Ohana raises her son in a similar environment and strives to pass on the adaptability she values. In her free time, she enjoys traveling, cooking, baking, and writing children’s books that she eventually hopes to publish.