Every year the Global Gaming Expo presents panels and discussions featuring thought leaders and executives spanning the industry. Rarely is center stage ceded to session attendees.
But Alex Dixon, CEO of Q Casino in Dubuque, Iowa, did just that last year during a session about diversity, equity, and inclusion. Walking into the audience, he shared a microphone with audience members willing to talk about their DEI experiences.
“I think we all suffer from a little bit of imposter syndrome,” Dixon says during a recent interview, “and I’m no different. I’m very passionate about inclusion. It’s deeply personal to me, but I don’t have all the answers.”
“Every time we have an opportunity to engage people in a setting like G2E, which brings people together. I think it’s just an opportunity to empower people and to be able to say we all need to be active participants and be inclusive.”
Dixon is a third-generation casino employee. His grandmother, a Louisiana native and now 93, migrated to Las Vegas from the cotton fields of Louisiana. His father, from rural Alabama, joined the Air Force and was stationed at Nellis Air Force Base. They both found work in the casino industry – his father was a longtime bartender at the Flamingo – but Dixon initially took a different path, one not afforded to, especially his grandmother.
“When she left, the rules were very explicit and had a lasting impact,” he says. “There was no ambiguity; you cannot walk through the front door. And in our business, by nature, we protect the incumbent.”
After graduating from Howard University in Washington, D.C., Dixon interned for J. P. Morgan, then was hired by Goldman Sachs, working on Wall Street and then in London before moving to Los Angeles, where he worked on Disney’s acquisition of Pixar.
“That was about a year of my life,” he says of the Disney project. “It taught me about business and distribution and content.”
Dixon was only 26 when he returned to Las Vegas to work for Silver Pacific Advisors, an investment banking firm. Back in his hometown, he was intrigued by and sought opportunities in the gaming industry.
“I’ve been around gaming all my life,” Dixon says. “But my family, we were the porters, the maids, the cooks, the valets, the table games dealers. I wanted to start a new career, but I didn’t know anybody or know the career path of what gaming was other than the frontline.”
Through Rick Fields, former SVP of operations at Mandalay Bay, Dixon met MGM CEO Bill Hornbuckle, who offered him a job managing a hotel. Dixon declined the opportunity and stayed in investment banking for a couple of years before joining Caesars Entertainment in 2010 as director of planning and analysis. Three years later he found himself on the East Coast again, helping then Caesars President John Payne open Horseshoe Baltimore.
It wasn’t the easiest task, making sure that all systems were operational when the casino opened. To add to Dixon’s difficulty, he was assigned the graveyard shift, working long hours in the middle of the night until the sun rose over Fort McHenry.
“That was his first big operations job, and he knew what he didn’t know,” says Payne, now president of Vici Properties in New Orleans. “One of the great things about Alex is that he’s curious in a very good way. The areas he didn’t know about, he was willing to put in the time to learn.”
Working the graveyard shift, Payne adds, was a good way to learn about operations during off-peak time. “He did that and was successful and he learned the business very well. I think that made him a better leader.”
Dixon was eventually employed by MGM for three years, including a stint as general manager of MGM Springfield in Massachusetts. He briefly worked for a hospitality firm before accepting a job as CEO of DRA, a non-profit organization in Dubuque, Iowa that runs Q Casino.
“When I got the call, I said it’s got to be a joke because I’d never heard of a non-profit casino,” Dixon says, laughing. “I’d never been to Iowa, never been outside the coasts, big cities.”
But when he learned how DRA works – a third of its profits are earmarked for charities, a third go to the city of Dubuque, and a third are used for development, including a new $75 million construction project at the casino – Dixon wholeheartedly embraced the opportunity.
Brad Cavanagh, the mayor of Dubuque, says that one Dixon’s best qualities is his “fearless optimism” and ability to inspire others. Cavanagh notes a campaign that Dixon and the Q Casino marketing team developed to illustrate the history and relevance of the DRA in relation to the city.
“This (marketing campaign) has created important momentum for the whole community as we work to tackle our most pressing challenges together,” Cavanagh said via email. “As Mayor, I was one of many partners on this project. Alex clearly recognizes that the success of the Q Casino and the success of the entire Dubuque region are one and the same, and he demonstrates his commitment to both every day as one of our city’s most charismatic and committed cheerleaders.”
Dixon acknowledges that he’s one of the few Black CEO in the gaming industry. He co-founded the African Americans in Gaming group as a support organization for allies and peers in the gaming industry. He’s passionate about the need for increased outreach to the Black community in the same way that other groups, notably Asians, have been wooed by the industry.
“We as an industry have done a very good job cultivating business with the domestic Asian consumer,” Dixon says. “We design restaurants, we pick out carpeting, there are slot machines, there are entire marketing teams who speak in the language. We do all these things to help to cultivate them, whether it’s international Asian or domestic Asian customers.
“But if I were to say, hey what percentage of our gaming revenues nationally come from different ethnic groups — and in this case I’m African American — and understand them, I think we as an industry could develop that market and develop internal opportunities to go after that market.”
But it’s not just Blacks that he wants to bring into gaming’s big tent. In Iowa, Dixon recognizes that many rural residents are also being “left out of the economic pie of America,” he says.
“A lot of the same things that I see as an African American within the broader industry are here. There’s a lot of corollary. I think we have to talk about these issues, because in order to solve them, in order to address them, we need data. But we also need to be able to say how are we creating capitalism that’s representative of our great country.”
