Accel Entertainment this week elected six directors to its board, including Bruce D. Wardinski.
Wardinski will be an independent director who will also serve on the board’s Compensation Committee and Nominating and Corporate Governance Committee.
“We are pleased to welcome Bruce to the Accel Board,” Andy Rubenstein, Accel Entertainment Chairman and CEO, said in a statement. “Bruce has spent his career in the hospitality and real estate business, most recently building and ultimately monetizing a complex, multi-site business with a strong local operating footprint as a public company CEO accountable to shareholders. That experience maps directly to where Accel is today – a proven platform with meaningful growth ahead of it. His perspective on capital allocation and long-term value creation will be an asset to our board as we continue to scale.”
Wardinski has more than 35 years of experience building and scaling growth businesses, with expertise in capital allocation, real estate investment, strategic finance and corporate governance.
He is the Founder and former Chairman and CEO of Playa Hotels & Resorts N.V., where he led the company from its founding in 2006 through its successful acquisition by Hyatt Hotels Corporation in June. Wardinksi built Playa into a public owner and operator of luxury all-inclusive resorts, growing its portfolio to 15 premier properties across Mexico, the Dominican Republic and Jamaica.
Wardinski serves as Non-Executive Chairman of DiamondRock Hospitality Company. Earlier, he served as CEO of Barceló Crestline Corporation and held senior financial roles at Host Marriott Corporation.
“I am pleased to join the Accel board at an exciting moment for the company,” Wardinski said. “Accel has built a genuinely differentiated platform – a large, distributed network with deep roots in the communities it serves and a business model that has demonstrated its resilience. I look forward to working with Andy and the rest of the board on capital allocation, growth strategy and governance as the company continues to grow.”
