The podcast Guiding Growth: Conversations with Community Leaders from the Gilbert Chamber of Commerce, event and meeting venue Modern Moments and the Gilbert Independent/yourvalley.net explores the human journey of leaders. There are stories of humility, triumph, roadblocks, and lessons learned. This partial transcript of the most recent podcast with Cynthia Dunham has been edited for brevity and clarity.         

Raised in Gilbert, Andi Ott has established herself as a dynamic business leader, blending her experience in the healthcare and restaurant industries. With studies in Nursing at Grand Canyon University, nearly a decade of experience in health care, and early career experience managing restaurants, Ott has consistently demonstrated a strategic mind-set and strong organizational skills. In 2019, she co-founded a Dog Haus Biergarten franchise with her husband, Damon, and quickly expanded their business across multiple locations in Arizona. Her leadership has been recognized with awards such as the Frank Zeolla Operator of the Year in 2023 and Business Leader of the Year by the Gilbert Chamber of Commerce in 2024. 

As she prepares to launch her new senior home care agency, The Next Chapter, this fall, Ott is excited to bring together her passion for business and her commitment to caring for others. Drawing on her diverse background, she said she wants to provide compassionate, high-quality care to seniors in their homes, while continuing to empower and lead her teams toward excellence. Beyond her professional endeavors, Ott is actively involved in her community, serving on the Board of the Elite Business Alliance and enjoying outdoor activities with her family. 

Let's talk a little bit about what childhood looked like for you. 

I'm originally from Toledo, Ohio. I lived there until I was 15. I lost my parents, both of them, when I was 5. So I was adopted by my aunt and uncle.  I have a lot of family there. My childhood wasn't awful by any means, but it was difficult dealing with trauma and dealing with a lack of a relationship really with my parents who adopted me. 

Where did you end up out here?  

In Gilbert. I've pretty much been in Gilbert almost continuously since I was 15. I went to Mesquite (High School). Obviously, that's a big public school, but there was a lot more opportunity for advanced courses and things like that there. I did that. I was very eager to get a job. I lived right off of Cooper and Houston. And so as soon as I turned 16, the week I turned 16, I walked all around those shopping complexes, which were really full still at that time, and applied everywhere. And then I got my first job at Quiznos within a week. 

Let's go from then ... high school, then what?  

I emancipated myself at 17, and I moved out.  

Explain this to me. I don't know what that means, emancipation.  

To put it super simply, it's almost like a divorce from your parents. You basically have to file paperwork. You have to prove that you can provide for yourself financially. You have to demonstrate that you have stable living and that you have a plan for your education and then you submit it to a judge, and you go before the judge to kind of plead your case on why you feel like you should be granted this emancipation.  

You were so close to being 18. Was there a reason that at 17 you just felt that was so necessary?  

I was in a hurry to get out for sure. There was just a lot of conflict. I never really got along with my aunt and uncle who adopted me. They still live here locally. You know, we've tried to settle things a little bit, but we didn't get along. It was a fairly hostile situation at home. 

I don't even remember what the argument was about, but I got my car taken, and I had purchased my car, and I was paying for my insurance, and I had done all of the things myself with my own money, and I was a little peeved. It wasn't necessarily the only thing, but that was the final straw. I pride myself on being resourceful. I actually went, and I found the title, which was in my name because I had paid for the car, and I got a ride over to the dealership because when my parents took the car, they took my keys and they put on the steering wheel lock. I went to the dealership, like the Mazda dealership. I provided my title. They provided me a key code that I then gave to a locksmith, who came out who drilled the Club off of my car and made me two new keys for my ignition. I packed my stuff up and left. 

I was working for Golden Corral. I think that was right before I went through their management training program. I think I did that at 18. I did Primavera online because I was working, and so I wasn't still going to Mesquite for my senior year, and then I went through management training with Golden Corral, and I stuck around there for a few years after we moved down to Sierra Vista. 

Somewhere in there, I got married for the first time. I don't really recommend getting married at 19 while you're trying to figure your life out. I got pregnant and then we moved back here because I wanted to be back in the Valley when I had my daughter. So I stepped down from management, and just worked hourly after having her and kind of had to sit and figure out my life and was like. I should have gone to college, and I didn't initially. So that's when I made plans to enroll and go through the nursing program eventually. I started at Mesa Community College and then Grand Canyon University. 

Talk about determination and grit and stamina. To know these things, to know what you want to do and to just see your way through it at such a young age, I think that's actually really admirable. 

I think I just kept going forward. I credit my daughter for a lot of that. It brings a different sense of purpose and responsibility to life. As I was saying, I don't recommend getting married at 19, but I have no regret because it did bring me my daughter. I did split up from her father, like within the first year of her being born. It was that realization that that was not a good relationship, that was not what I wanted modeled for her.  

That was the beginning of a lot of years of grinding. I worked night shift at Honor Health, and while I was in nursing school. There was a few years there where I was up for 36 hours straight, more often than I got sleep. 

When you look back at that time, is there something in particular that you know now that you didn't know then, that you wish you could go back and just tell yourself? 

I don't know if there's anything I could have told myself at that point. It's a lot of survival mode to be honest. It's a lot of just doing the do and putting one foot in front of the other. I'm not really sure even if I could go back and provide that encouragement. At the end of the day, I knew I had to do it. I knew that there was no other option. I just kept doing it, and I grew through it. 

For more on Ott’s journey through health care and into business with her new husband at DogHaus, go to https://guidinggrowth.co/episodes/andi-ott or your favorite podcast platform. 

We would like to invite our readers to submit their civil comments, pro or con, on this issue. Email AZOpinions@iniusa.org. Tom Blodgett can be reached by email at tblodgett@iniusa.org or follow him @sp_blodgett on X.