It has been less than a year since Rose Hudson took over as president and CEO of Louisiana Lottery, but it didn’t take her long to realize there’s no place she’d rather be.
“I have landed in this position, one of the best places I could be at this point in my life,” says Hudson, 43. “Everybody can’t say that.”
Hudson joined Louisiana Lottery as it was starting up during the Buddy Roemer administration after serving as a legislative fiscal analyst. She earned multiple promotions in the year she was there, going from budget director to executive resources director and later to executive resources director/online game coordinator.
After leaving Louisiana Lottery and serving posts in the Louisiana Department of Social Services and the Department of Education, Hudson returned in March 2000 as senior vice president of human resources and legislative relations.
During her stints, Hudson fostered relationships that helped her acquire the skills necessary to make the progression from the technicalities of fiscal analysis to the broader scope of administration. “I still today am mentored,” Hudson says. “And there are people who probably don’t recognize they’re mentors to me.”
Hudson spent six years heading human resources, making efforts to travel the regional offices and learn the needs of employees. She also was taking the time to attend conventions and learn the finer points of the business end of the organization. When Randy Davis stepped down as head of the corporation in 2006, Hudson was chosen as his successor.
Hudson says she and Davis are good friends with strikingly different personalities. Her first mission as head of Louisiana Lottery was to calm the masses. “I had to look the employees eye-to-eye and say, ‘The hard-working person I was before that put the business first and integrity first, I’m still that person,’” Hudson says.
The career path that Hudson has taken over the years has always involved her getting jobs when people came and found her. Because of her focus on the job, she has spent little time plotting where she’d like to end up. “I’ve looked forward for the business, but I’ve never looked forward for myself,” Hudson says. “My worry is about doing the right thing here. My last position was worrying about doing the right thing there.”
It hasn’t has always happened smoothly, though. Hudson says there were times when she was reminded that she was a woman, instead of being accepted simply in whatever role she was performing. But that, she says, is a lesson learned.
“The biggest lesson is my obligation that the women who work with me and are next just have a wider path,” she says. “If we do it right, the next generation has got to have more opportunities.”
Hudson is constantly looking for other lessons to be learned, gravitating her reading habits to stories of success. She particularly finds it useful to look at the accomplishments of those who didn’t necessarily get it right the first time.
“I get some real lessons,” she says. “Not just from the successes, but also the failures."
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