“You can be anything you want to be, you just have to work hard. Play fair. Do everything with integrity — it’s the one thing you can give away that you can never get back.”Her father’simple but prescient advice shaped Paula Kuykendall’s approach to success in life and in business. Recently retired, Kuykendall reflects on these principles and the TU foundation that helped launch her career, which spanned from public accounting to an executive position in a Fortune 100 company.
Kuykendall didn’t take the traditional route to TU. She started at Oklahoma State University but returned to Tulsa after just two years to get a job and to figure out what she wanted to do next. It was the oil boom of the early 1980s, and Kuykendall secured a job at Occidental Petroleum, which offered the opportunity to fund her tuition at TU. She worked full time and took nine hours a semester until the oil bust, when she was laid off. In lieu of a traditional severance package, Occidental agreed to fund a semester of Kuykendall’s TU tuition and books. Her husband, Patrick (MTax ’90), urged her to enroll as a full-time student and finish her accounting degree.
Kuykendall has fond memories of her professors. “Bill Jarnigan and Dennis Hudson made me love accounting, which seems kind of crazy — unless you are an accountant,” she recalls. Jarnigan also served as a mentor and cautioned Kuykendall not to expect a job offer when accounting firms would visit campus to recruit top students. “He said, ‘You’re older, and that’s just not who they hire. I just don’t want you to be disappointed.’” She interviewed anyway. “I got an offer from seven of the eight firms. I chose Arthur Andersen, and (Jarnigan) was the first person I told. I marched into his office and said, ‘Here you go — I’m not disappointed.’”
Jim Miller (BSBA ’66) was managing partner at Arthur Andersen when he hired Kuykendall as an accountant. “He took a chance on me, and I owe a lot to him,” she said. The two remain close friends and are staunch TU supporters. She smiles and says, “I always tell people that once you work for Miller, you always work for Miller. I haven’t worked for him for 30 years, but I still do exactly what he tells me to do.”
After 10 years in public accounting, Kuykendall sought a career in private industry and went to work for Snappy Car Rental. “Going into a company and being part of the journey and the solution was a whole new world for me, and I just fell in love with it,” she said. She later held key roles at Dollar Thrifty Automotive Group and a convenience store business based in Chicago. In late 2003, Bill Lobeck (TU Business Hall of Fame 2004) and a private equity firm bought National and Alamo and hired Kuykendall as the chief accounting officer. The company relocated from south Florida to Tulsa in late 2004. “He’s another person who changed my life forever,” said Kuykendall. She later joined Hilton Worldwide as chief accounting officer and commuted to its headquarters in Washington, D.C., each week for seven years. During her time at Hilton, Kuykendall and her team helped take the company public in the largest IPO of 2013 raising more than $2.3 billion.
Looking back on her career, Kuykendall said the relationships she built along the way stand out the most. “The thing I’m proudest of is the people who have worked with me along the way and seeing what they’ve accomplished. That means way more to me than anything I’ve been able to accomplish myself.” And while female executives in the accounting field were historically uncommon, Kuykendall says she never looked at herself as a woman in business. “It just didn’t seem different to me. I never carried that chip on my shoulder. If you’re good at what you do and you treat the people who work for you well, you will have success.”
Though she’s retired, Kuykendall generously invests her time in causes dear to her heart. Of course, TU tops that list. She is “ridiculously passionate” about TU athletics, especially football. Her nephew, Nathan Walker (BSBA ’19) attended TU and was the kicker for the Golden Hurricane football team. During that time, she organized and raised donations to fund a pre-game tailgate for the families of the football players free of charge, which continues today. As with any sport, the families become “family” and are some of our dearest friends. She also considers the student-athletes family: “I now have lots of TU kids,” she laughs. “I fed them for the last five years, and I love them to death.” Kuykendall encourages alumni and members of the local community to attend athletic events on campus in support of TU’s student-athletes. “These kids deserve it. We have one of the highest graduation rates of any D1 school, and it’s because they come to TU for a great education while they get to do something they love.”
She also chairs the Collins College of Business executive advisory board and is a member of the TU Alumni board. She and Patrick were the honorary chairs of the TU Uncorked scholarship fundraiser in 2019 (and make sure to note that they bested Miller’s previous fundraising total). In the Tulsa community, she sits on the board of the Child Abuse Network and is board chair of the Girl Scouts of Eastern Oklahoma.
When Kuykendall discovered she would be honored as a TU distinguished alumna, she says she was completely blown away. She jokes that she asked if everyone else said no or if they ran out of people to ask, but remarked with earnest that, “I love this university, and I can’t tell you how much it means to me. It means the world.”
Celebrating the honor means even more to Kuykendall that it occurs during the university’s 125th anniversary. “My grandparents had season tickets for as long as I can remember growing up. I was born and raised here, and TU is part of who we are. I couldn’t be prouder to be a distinguished alumna in our 125th year.”