Silva, the seven-year CEO at Tampa-based Checkers/Rally, is one of those force-of-nature personalities that makes reporters wonder if we’re being played; if he’s chugged seven cups of coffee and is putting it on for the media. Before long, though, it becomes apparent that it’s just Rick being Rick.
Profile Summary
| Full Name | Rick Silva |
| Gender | Male |
| Nationality | American |
| Profession | Business man |
| Notable as | CEO of Checkers |
| Been a CEO for how many years? | Seven (7) years |
| Net Worth | $100 million |
| Height | 6-foot-1 |
Who Is Rick Silva?
He is the CEO of Checkers. Silva’s unbridled effervescence, the way he attacks just about everything he does, has contributed mightily to the turnaround that Checkers has enjoyed during his tenure. But he’s just as adept at picking high-quality people and giving them the latitude to perform. The chief exec fosters an extremely collaborative work environment, his management team agrees.
His Journey Thus Far
Standing 6-foot-1 and with a husky build, Silva is a commanding physical presence. He talks in torrents, preferring emotional discourse to wonk speak. When the CEO gets really amped, which is often, he lowers his voice into a near-whisper, as if knowing that to go full volume might blow out a window.
Silva has a hard time explaining how he exists in a near-constant state of carpe diem. Maybe it’s just built into his DNA. But a lot of it has to do with the way he was raised. He’s the son of Cuban emigres who left the Castro regime in 1962 with a single suitcase. Neither his father, a banker, nor his mother, a pharmacist, could find work in their adopted home of Miami — although Silva recalls they picked tomatoes.
The family moved to Union City, N.J., where he was born Enrique Silva. Within a few years, the Silvas, with three sons, returned to Miami. Instead of setting into a Cuban enclave, the family bought a home in a place they could afford: Westchester, which back then, Silva says, “was in the boondocks.”
It was there that Silva and his brothers endured ethnic slurs and got into scraps with locals who didn’t appreciate the influx of Latinos into their midst. “You got to remember, it was very much like the Deep South in Miami then,” Silva recalls.
It was also in Westchester where a deep work ethic took hold.
“I think it has something to do with that fire in the belly that seems to come with the immigrant experience,” Silva explains. “You play a lot of offense, not too much defense. Growing up, we didn’t have a lot. If you had enough money to put food on the table, the rest of the stuff isn’t that important.”
Silva’s parents divorced while he was in middle school, and he hasn’t seen his father since. His mother earned her pharmacist license and opened Bird Road Pharmacy close to their home. Mom and sons worked the shop ceaselessly when the boys weren’t immersed in their education.
It was working at the drugstore that made Silva hungry for a life in business.
After graduating law school from University of Pennsylvania — he’d started in accounting as an undergrad but there wasn’t enough action — Silva worked for three years at the Miami law firm Greenberg Traurig, where he specialized in real estate transactions.
Still hankering for the business world, he answered want ads for corporate counsel at Ryder and Burger King. He got offers from both. “Burger King was very progressive,” Silva says of joining the company in 1993. “They were behind McDonald’s in sales but the company had a lot of young smart people. Plus they had a history of general counsels moving into the business side.”
Rick Silva Net Worth
Rick Silva is believed to have a whooping net worth estimated to be over $100 million.
Conclusion
During his 13 years at Burger King, Silva headed up Latin American expansion and then spearheaded a reinvigoration of stateside corporate stores. When New York-based Wellspring Capital Management acquired Checkers/Rally in 2007, it quickly became apparent they needed fresh leadership to shepherd the slumping brand into the 21st Century.
The new owners set their sites on the star-caliber talent at Burger King. Silva’s arrival is when the Checkers turnaround began in earnest.
Sentinel Capital Partners, another New York private equity outfit, bought Checkers/Rally earlier this year. They considered the CEO a key part of the deal.
Silva lives in Tampa with his wife and children, whom he says prefer Tampa to Miami. He loves it here, too.
Terry Snyder, Checkers’ chief marketing officer and Silva’s first hire, sums up her boss: “He’s a smart, seasoned businessman, but a lot of folks are. I think his secret sauce is his interesting combination of passionate intensity balanced with having really strong personal values and just being a good human being.”
